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NOTES ON
LIFE AND LETTERS

THE WORKS OF

Joseph Conrad
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NOTES ON

LIFE & LETTERS

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JOSEPH CONRAD

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AUTHOR'S NOTE

I DON^T know whether I ought to offer an apology
for this collection which has more to do with life
than with letters. Its appeal is made to orderly
minds. This, to be frank about it, is a process
of tidying up, which, from the nature of things,
caiihof "5e~ regarded as premature. The fact is
that I wanted to do it myself because of a feeling
that had nothing to do with the considerations
of worthiness or unworthiness of the small (but
unbroken) pieces collected within the covers of
this volume. Of course it may be said that I might
have taken up a broom and used it without saying
anything about it. That, certainly, is one way
of tidying up.

But it would have been too much to have
expected me to treat all this matter as removable
rubbish. All those things had a place in my life.
Whether any of them deserve to have been picked
up and ranged on' the shelf — this shelf — I cannot
say, and, frankly, I havejiot allowed my rnindjto
dwell on thequestio_n,_J_was afraid_jaL.thinJdng-
myielFlntoainood that would hurt my JeeHngsj^
foF those" pieces of writing, whatever may be the

vi AUTHOR'S NOTE

comment on their display, appertain to the char-
acter of the man.

And so here they are, dusted, which was but a
decent thing to do, but in no way polished, ex-
tending from the year ''98 to the year '20, a thin
array (for such a stretch of time) of really innocent
attitudes : Conrad literary, Conrad political, Conrad
reminiscent, Conrad controversial. Well, yes! A
one-man show — or is it merely the show of one
man?

The only thing that will not be found amongst
those Figures and Things that have passed away,
will be Conrad en fantoiifles. It is a constitutional
inability. Schlafrock und fantofeln ! Not that!

Never! ... I don't know whether I dare boast

*- --- , . -

Hke a certain South American general who used
t6~say that no emergency of war or peace had
ever foun3riiim ^^^ith his boots off "; but I may
say~that whenever the various periodicals men-
tioned in this book called on me to come out and
blow the trumpet of personal opinions or strike
the pensive lute that speaks of the past, I a^^ys
tried to pull on my boots first. I didn't want to
3o it, God knows! Their Editors, to whom I beg
to offer zxiy thanks here, made me perform mainly
by kindness but partly by bribery. Well, yesl
Bribery? What can you expect? I^ never _prer_
tended to be better than the~peQple_in__the__nexL
street, or even in the same street.

AUTHOR'S NOTE vii

This volume (including these embarrassed intro-
ductory remarks) is as near as I shall ever come
to deshabille in pubHc; and perhaps it will do
something to help towards a better vision of the
man, if it gives no more than a partial view of a
piece of his back, a little dusty (after the process
of tidying up), a little bowed, and receding from
the world not because of weariness or misanthropy
but for other reasons that cannot be helped:
because the leaves fall, the water flows, the clock
ticks with that horrid pitiless solemnity which
you must have observed in the ticking of jthe hall
crock at Tiome^ For reasons like that. Yes I It
rece3es! And this was the chance to afford one
more view of it — even to my own eyes.

The section within this volume called Letters
explains itself, though I do not pretend to say
that it justifies its own existence. It claims nothing
in its defence except the right of speech which I
believe belongs to everybody outside a Trappist
monastery. The part I have ventured, for short-
ness' sake, to call Life, may perhaps justify itself
by the emotional sincerity of the feehngs to which
the various papers included under that head owe
their origin. And as they relate to events of which
everyone has a date, they are in the nature of
sign-posts pointing out the direction m}- thoughts
were compelled to take at the various cross-roads.
If anybody detects any sort of consistency in the

viii AUTHOR'S NOTE

choicejjhis^will be only proof positive that wisdom
had nothing to do^with it. WTiether right or wrong,
instinct alone is invariable; a fact which only
adds_a deeper shade to^ts^inherent mystery. The
appearance of intellectuality these pieces ^ may
present at first sight is mef ely^the "result ^f the
arrangement of w^ords. The logic that may be
found there is only the logic of the language. But
I need not labour the point. There will be plenty
of people sagacious enough to perceive the absence
of all wisdom from these pages. But I believe
sufficiently in human sympathies to imagine that
very few will question their sincerity. Whatever
delusions I may have suffered from I have had no
delusions as to the nature of the facts commented
on here. I may have misjudged their import:
but that is the sort of error for which one may
expect a certain amount of toleration.

The only paper of this collection which has never
been pubhshed before is the Note on the PoHsh
Problem. It was written at the request of a friend
to be shown privately, and its " Protectorate "
idea, sprung from a strong sense of the critical
nature of the situation, was shaped by the actual
circumstances of the time. The time was about
a month before the entrance of Roumania into the
war, and though, honestly, I had seen already
the shadow of coming events I could not permit
my misgivings to enter into and destroy the

AUTHOR'S NOTE ix

structure of my plan. I still believe that there
was some sense in it. It may certainly be charged
with the appearance of lack of faith and it lays
itself open to the throwing of many stones; but
my object was practical and I had to consider
warily the preconceived notions of the people to
whom it was impHcitly addressed, and also their
unjustifiable hopes. They were unjustifiable, but
who was to tell them that ? I mean who was wise
enough and convincing enough to show them the
inanity of their mental attitude ? The whole atmo-
sphere was poisoned with visions that were not
so much false as simply impossible. They were
also the result of vague and unconfessed fears,
and that made their strength. For myself, with a
very definite dread in my heart, I was careful not
to allude to their character because I did not want
the Note to be thrown away unread. And then I
had to remember that thejmpossible has sometimes
tIie""trKk_of_coming to pass to the confusion of
minds and often to the crushing of hearts.

Ut the other papers I have nothing special to
say. They are what they are, and I am by now
too hardened a sinner to feel ashamed of insigni-
ficant indiscretions. And as to their appearance
in this form I claim that indulgence to which all
sinners against themselves are entitled.

J. c.

1920.

CONTENTS

PART I. — LETTERS

PAGE

Books Speaker 3

Henry James . . . North American Review 13

Alphonse Daudet . . . Outlook 25

Guy de Maupassant 33

Anatole France . (I.) Speaker ; (II.) English Review 43

Turgenev ....

Stephen Crane : A Note With-
out Dates

Tales of the Sea .

An Observer in Malaya

A Happy Wanderer

The Life Beyond .

The Ascending Effort .

The Censor of Plays .

61

London Mercury

67

Outlook

73

Academy

79

Daily Mail

83

Daily Mail

89

Daily Mail

95

Daily Mail

lOI

CONTENTS

PART II. — LIFE

Autocracy and War .

The Crime of Partition

A Note on the Poush
Problem

Poland Revisited

First News .

Well Done .

Tradition

Confidence ,

Flight

Some Reflections on
Loss of the

Certain Aspects of the Ad-
mirable Inquiry .

Protection of Ocean Liners .

A Friendly Place

Fortnightly Review
Fortnightly Review

THE

Titanic".

Daily News

Reveille

Daily Chronicle

Daily Mail

Golden Daily Mail

Fledgling

English Review

PAGE
III

179
189

241
261
271
281

287

English Review 309

Illustrated London News 335
Daily Mail 351

PART I

LETTERS

BOOKS

1905

I

'' I HAVE not read this author's books, and if I
have read them I have forgotten what they were
about."

These words are reported as having been
uttered in our midst not a hundred years ago,
pubHcly, from the seat of justice, by a civic
magistrate. The words of our municipal rulers
have a solemnity and importance far above the
words of other mortals, because our municipal
rulers more than any other variety of our gover-
nors and masters represent the average wisdom,
temperament, sense and virtue of the community.
This generaHsation, it ought to be promptly said
in the interests of eternal justice (and recent friend-
ship), does not apply to the United States of
America. There, if one may believe the long and
helpless indignations of their daily and weekly
Press, the majority of municipal rulers appear to
be thieves of a particularly irrepressible sort. But
this by the way. My concern is with a statement
issuing from the average temperament and the

3

BOOKS

average wisdom of a great and wealthy community,
and uttered by a civic magistrate obviously with-
out fear and without reproach.

I confess I am pleased with his temper, which is
that of prudence. " I have not read the books,"
he says, and immediately he adds, " and if I have
read them I have forgotten." This is excellent
caution. And I Hke his style: it is unartificial
and bears the stamp of manly sincerity. As a
reported piece of prose this declaration is easy to
read and not difficult to believe. Many books have
not been read; still more have been forgotten. As
a piece of civic oratory this declaration is strikingly
eftective. Calculated to fall in with the bent of the
popular mind, so familiar with all forms of forget-
fulness, it has also the power to stir up a subtle
emotion while it starts a train of thought — and
what greater force can be expected from human
speech ? But it is in naturalness that this declara-
tion is perfectly deHghtful, for there is nothing
more natural than for a grave City Father to for-
get what the books he has read once — ^long ago —
in his giddy youth maybe — were about.

And the books in question are novels, or, at any
rate, were written as novels. I proceed thus cau-
tiously (following my illustrious example) because
being without fear and desiring to remain as far
as possible without reproach, I confess at once
that I have not read them.

BOOKS

I have not; and of the million persons or more
who are said to have read them, I never met one
yet with the talent of lucid exposition sufficiently
developed to give me a connected account of what
they are about. But they are books, part and
parcel of humanity, and as such, in their ever
increasing, josthng multitude, they are worthy of
regard, admiration, and compassion.

Especially of compassion. It has been said a
long time ago that books have their fate. They
have, and it is very much like the destiny of man.
They share with us the great incertitude of igno-
miny or glory — of severe justice and senseless per-
secution— of calumny and misunderstanding— the
shame of undeserved success. Of all the inanimatCHv
objects ^ofaU men^s creations^books are the nearest
to us, for they contain our very thought, our amBi-
tions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to
truth, and our persistent leaning towards error. \
But most of all they resemble us in their precarious
hold on hfe. A bridge constructed according to
the rules of the art of bridge-building is certain
of a long, honourable and useful career. But a\
book as good in its way as the bridge may perish /
obscurely on the very day of its birth. The art of
their creators is not sufficient to give them more
than a moment of life. Of the books born from ,
the restlessness, the inspiration, and the vanity of j
human minds, those that the Muses would love best (

BOOKS

lie more than all others'\inder the menace of an
early death. Sometimes their defects will save
them. Sometimes a book fair to see may — to
use a lofty expression — have no individual soul.
Obviously a book of that sort cannot die. It
can only crumble into dust. But the best of
books drawing sustenance from the sympathy and
memory of men have Hved on the brink of de-
struction, for men's memories are short, and their
sympathy is, we must admit, a very fluctuating,
unprincipled emotion.

No secret of eternal life for our books can be
found amongst the formulas of art, any more than
for our bodies in a prescribed combination of
drugs. This is not because some books are not
worthy of enduring life, but because the formulas
of art are dependent on things variable, unstable
and untrustworthy; on human sympathies, on
prejudices, on likes and disHkes, on the sense of
virtue and the sense of propriety, on beliefs and
theories that, indestructible in themselves, always
change their form — often in the lifetime of one
fleeting generation.

BOOKS

II

Of all books, novels, which the Muses should love,
make a serious claim on our compassion. The art
of the novelist is simple. At the same time it is
the most elusive of all creative arts, the most
Hable to be obscured by the scruples of its ser-
vants and votaries, the one pre-eminently destined
to bring trouble to the mind and the heart of the
artist. AitQi all, the creation of a world is not a
small undertaking except perhaps to the divinely
gifted. In truth every noveHst must begin by
creating for himself a world, great or little, in
which he can honestly beheve. This world cannot
be made otherwise than in his own image: it is
fated to remain individual and a little mysterious,
and yet it must resemble something already fami-
Har to the experience, the thoughts and the sensa-
tions of his readers. At the heart of fiction, even
the least worthy of the name, some sort of truth
can be found — if only the truth of a childish
theatrical ardour in the game of life, as in the
novels of Dumas the father. But the fair truth of
human deHcacy can be found in Mr. Henry James's
novels; and the comical, appaUing truth of human
rapacity let loose amongst the spoils of existence
lives in the monstrous world created by Balzac.
The pursuit of happiness by means lawful and

8 BOOKS

unlawful, tlirough resignation or revolt, by the clever
manipulation of conventions or by solemn hanging
on to the skirts of the latest scientific theory, is
the only theme that can be legitimately developed
by the novehst who is the chronicler of the adven-
tures of mankind amongst the dangers of the king-
dom of the earth. And the kingdom of this earth
itself, the ground upon which his individuaHties
stand, stumble, or die, must enter into his scheme
of faithful record. To encompass all this in one
harmonious conception is a great feat; and even
to attempt it deliberately with serious intention,
not from the senseless prompting of an ignorant
heart, is an honourable ambition. For it requires
some courage to step in calmly where fools may be
eager to rush. As a distinguished and successful
French novelist once observed of fiction, ** C'est
un art trop difiicile."

It is natural that the novelist should doubt his
ability to cope with his task. He imagines it more
gigantic than it is. And yet literary creation being
only one of the legitimate forms of human activity
has no value but on the condition of not excluding
the fullest recognition of all the more distinct forms
of action. This condition is sometim^es forgotten by
the man of letters, who often, especially in his
youth, is inchned to lay a claim of exclusive
superiority for his own amongst all the other
tasks of the human mind. The mass of verse and

BOOKS

prose may glimmer here and there with the glow
of a divine spark, but in the sum of human effort
it has no special importance. There is no justifi-
cative formula for its existence any more than for
any other artistic achievement. With the rest of
them it is destined to be forgotten, without, per-
haps, leaving the faintest trace. Where a novelist
has an advantage over the workers in other fields

of thought is in his privilege of freedom — the free-

dom of expression and the freedom of confessing
his innermost behefs — which should console him
for the hard slavery of the pen.

Ill

Liberty of imagination should be the most t
precious possession of a novelist. To try volun-
tarily to discover the fettering dogmas of some
romantic, realistic, or naturalistic creed in the
free work of its own inspiration, is a trick worthy
of human perverseness which, after inventing an
absurdity, endeavours to find for it a pedigree of
distinguished ancestors. It is a weakness of in-
ferior minds when it is not the cunning device of
those who, uncertain of their talent, would seek
to add lustre to it by the authority of a school.
Such, for instance, are the high priests who have
proclaimed Stendhal for a prophet of Naturalism.
But Stendhal himself would have accepted no

lo BOOKS

limitation of his freedom. Stendhal's mind was of
the first order. His spirit above must be raging
with a peculiarly Stendhalesque scorn and indigna-
tion. For the truth is that more than one kind of
intellectual cowardice hides behind the hterary
formulas. And Stendhal was pre-eminently cour-
ageous. He wrote his two great novels, which so
few people have read, in a spirit of fearless liberty.
It must not be supposed that I claim for the
artist in fiction the freedom of moral NihiHsm. I
would require from him many acts of faith of
which the first would be the cherishing of an un-
dying hope; and hope, it will not be contested,
imphes all the piety of effort and renunciation. It
is the God-sent form of trust in the magic force
and inspiration belonging to the life of this earth.
We are inclined to forget that the way of excel-
lence is in the intellectual, as distinguished from
emotional, humility. What one feels so hopelessly
barren in declared pessimism is just its arrogance.
It seems as if the discovery made by many men
at various times that there is much evil in the
world were a source of proud and unholy joy unto
some of the modern writers. That frame of mind
is not the proper one in which to approach seriously
the art of fiction. It gives an author — goodness
only Tcnows why — an elated sense of his own
superiority. And there is nothing more dangerous
than such an elation to that absolute loyalty towards

BOOKS II

his feelings and sensations an author should keep
hold of in his most exalted moments of creation.

To be hopeful in an artistic sense it is not neces- •
sary to think that the world is good. It is enough
to beHeve that there is no impossibihty of its being
made so. If the flight of imaginative thought may *
be allowed to rise superior to many moraHties
current amongst mankind, a noveHst who would
think himself of a superior essence to other men
would miss the first condition of his calHng. To •
have the gift of words is no such great matter. A
man furnished with a long-range weapon does not
become a hunter or a warrior by the mere posses-
sion of a fire-arm; many other qualities of char- •
acter and temperament are necessary to make him
either one or the other. Of him from whose armoury
of phrases one in a hundred thousand may perhaps
hit the far-distant and elusive mark of art I would
ask that in his deaHngs with mankind he should •
be capable of giving a tender recognition to their
obscure virtues. I would not have him impatient .
with their small faihngs and scornful of their errors.
I would not have him expect too much gratitude
from that humanity whose fate, as illustrated in
individuals, it is open to him to depict as ridiculous
or terrible. I would wish him to look with a large •
forgiveness at men's ideas and prejudices, which
are by no means the outcome of malevolence, but
depend on their education, their social status, even

12 BOOKS

their professions. The good artist should expect
no recognition of his toil and no admiration of
his genius, because his toil can with difficulty be
appraised and his genius cannot possibly mean
anything to the illiterate who, even from the
dreadful wisdom of their evoked dead, have, so
far, culled nothing but inanities and platitudes. _I^
would wish him to enlarge his sympathies by
patient and loving observation while he grows Jn
mental power. It is in the impartial practice of
life, if anywhere, that the promise of perfection
for his art can be found, rather than in the absurd
formulas trying to prescribe this or that particu-
lar method of technique or conception. Let him
mature the strength of his imagination amongst
the things of this earth, which it is his business to
cherish and know, and refrain from calling down
his inspiration ready-made from some heaven of
perfections of which he knows nothing. And I
would not grudge him the proud illusion that will
come sometimes to a writer: the illusion that his
achievement has almost equalled the greatness of
his dream. For what else could give him the
serenity and the force to hug to his breast as a
thing dehghtful and human, the virtue, the recti-
tude and sagacity of his own City, declaring with
simple eloquence through the mouth of a Conscript
Father : '' I have not read this author's books,
and if I have read them I have forgotten . . ."

HENRY JAMES

An Appreciation
1905

The critical faculty hesitates before the magnitude
of Mr. Henry James's work. His books stand on
my shelves in a place whose accessibility proclaims
the habit of frequent communion. But not all his
books. There is no collected edition to date, such
as some of " our masters " have been provided
with; no neat rows of volumes in buckram or half
calf, putting forth a hasty claim to completeness,
and conveying to my mind a hint of finality, of a
surrender to fate of that field in which all these
victories have been won. Nothing of the sort
has been done for Mr. Henry James's victories in
England.

In a world such as ours, so painful with all sorts
of wonders, one would not exhaust oneself in bar-
ren marvelling over mere bindings, had not the
fact, or rather the absence of the material fact,
prominent in the case of other men whose writing
counts (for good or evil) — ^had it not been, I say,
expressive of a direct truth spiritual and intel-

13

14 HENRY JAMES

lectual; an accident of — I suppose — the publishing
business acquiring a symbolic meaning from its
negative nature. Because, emphatically, in the
body of Mr. Henry James's work there is no sug-
gestion of finality, nowhere a hint of surrender, or
even of probabihty of surrender, to his own vic-
torious achievement in that field where he is a
master. Happily, he will never be able to claim
completeness; and, were he to confess to it in a
moment of self-ignorance, he would not be believed
by the very minds for whom such a confession
naturally would be meant. It is impossible to
think of Mr. Henry James becoming " complete "
otherwise than by the brutality of our common
fate whose finality is meaningless — in the sense of
its logic being of a material order, the logic of a
faUing stone.

I do not know into what brand of ink Mr. Henry
James dips his pen; indeed, I heard that of late
he had been dictating; but I know that his mind
is steeped in the waters flowing from the fountain
of intellectual youth. The thing — a privilege — a
miracle — what you will — is not quite hidden from
the meanest of us who run as we read. To those
who have the grace to stay their feet it is manifest.
After some twenty years of attentive acquaintance
with Mr. Henry James's work, it grows into abso-
lute conviction which, all personal feeHng apart,
brings a sense of happiness into one's artistic exist-

HENRY JAMES 15

ence. If gratitude, as someone defined it, is a lively
sense of favours to come, it becomes very easy to
be grateful to the author of l^he Ambassadors — ^to
name the latest of his works. The favours are sure
to com^e; the spring of that benevolence will never
run dry. The stream of inspiration flows brimful
in a predetermined direction, unaffected by the
periods of drought, untroubled in its clearness by
the storms of the land of letters, without languor
or violence in its force, never running back upon
itself, opening new visions at every turn of its
course through that richly inhabited country its
fertiht)^ has created for our delectation, for our
judgment, for our exploring. It is, in fact, a magic
spring.

\Vith this phrase the metaphor of the perennial
spring, of the inextinguishable youth, of running
waters, as applied to Mr. Henry James's inspira-
tion, may be dropped. In its volume and force the
body of his work may be compared rather to a
majestic river. All creative art is magic, is evoca-
tion of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlighten-
ing, famihar and surprising, for the edification of
mankind, pinned down by the conditions of its
existence to the earnest consideration of the most
insignificant tides of reahty.

Action in its essence, the creative art of a writer
of fiction may be compared to rescue work carried
out in darkness against cross gusts of wind swaying

i6 HENRY JAMES

the action of a great multitude. It is rescue work,
this snatching of vanishing phases of turbulence,
disguised in fair words, out of the native obscurity
into a Hght where the strugghng forms may be
seen, seized upon, endowed with the only possible
form of permanence in this world of relative values
— the permanence of memory. And the multitude
feels it obscurely too; since the demand of the
individual to the artist is, in effect, the cry, " Take
me out of myself! " meaning really, out of my
perishable activity into the light of imperishable
consciousness. But everything is relative, and the
Hght of consciousness is only enduring, merely the
most enduring of the things of this earth, imperish-
able only as against the short-Hved work of our
industrious hands.

When the last aqueduct shall have crumbled to
pieces, the last airship fallen to the ground, the
last blade of grass have died upon a dying earth,
man, indomitable by his training in resistance
to misery and pain, shall set this undiminished
Hght of his eyes against the feeble glow of the
sun. The artistic faculty, of which each of us has
a minute grain, may find its voice in some in-
dividual of that last group, gifted with a power of
expression and courageous enough to interpret the
ultimate experience of mankind in terms of his
temperament, in terms of art. I do not mean to
say that he would attempt to beguile the last

HENRY JAMES 17

moments of humanity by an ingenious tale. It
would be too much to expect — from humanity. I
doubt the heroism of the hearers. As to the heroism
of the artist, no doubt is necessary. There would
be on his part no heroism. The artist in his calUng
of interpreter creates (the clearest form of demon-
stration) because he must. He is so much of a
voice that, for him, silence is like death; and the
postulate was, that there is a group alive, clustered
on his threshold to watch the last flicker of light
on a black sky, to hear the last word uttered in
the stilled workshop of the earth. It is safe to
affirm that, if anybody, it will be the imaginative
man who would be moved to speak on the eve of
that day without to-morrow — whether in austere
exhortation or in a phrase of sardonic comment,
who can guess ?

For my own part, from a short and cursory ac-
quaintance with my kind, I am inclined to think
that the last utterance will formulate, strange as
it may appear, some hope now to us utterly incon-
ceivable. For mankind is delightful in its pride,
its assurance, and its indomitable tenacity. It will
sleep on the battlefield among its own dead, in the
manner of an army having won a barren victory.
It wiU not know when it is beaten. And perhaps
it is right in that quality. The victories are not,
perhaps, so barren as it may appear from a purely
strategical, utilitarian point of view. Mr. Henry

i8 HENRY JAMES

James seems to hold that behef. Nobody has ren-
dered better, perhaps, the tenacity of temper, or
knowTi how to drape the robe of spiritual honour
about the drooping form of a victor in a barren
strife. And the honour is always well won; for
the struggles Mr. Henry James chronicles with
such subtle and direct insight are, though only
perosnal contests, desperate in their silence, none
the less heroic (in the modern sense) for the absence
of shouted watchwords, clash of arm.s and sound of
trumpets. Those are adventures in which only
choice souls are ever involved. And Mr. Henry
James records them with a fearless and insistent
fidehty to the feri'peties of the contest, and the
feehngs of the combatants.

The fiercest excitements of a romance de cape et
d^epee, the romance of yard-arm and boarding pike
so dear to youth, whose knowledge of action (as of
other things) is imperfect and Hmited, are matched,
for the quickening of our maturer years, by the
tasks set, by the difficulties presented, to the sense
of truth, of necessity — before all, of conduct — of
Mr. Henr\' James's men and women. His mankind
is dehghtful. It is dehghtful in its tenacity; it
refuses to own itself beaten; it will sleep on the
battlefield. These warhke images come by them-
selves under the pen; since from the duahty of
man's nature and the competition of individuals,
the life-history of the earth must in the last

HENRY JAMES 19

instance be "a history of a really very relentless
warfare. Neither his fellows, nor his gods, nor his
passions will leave a man alone. In virtue of
these allies and enemies, he holds his precarious
dominion, he possesses his fleeting significance;
and it is this relation in all its manifestations, great
and little, superficial or profound, and this rela-
tion alone, that is commented upon, interpreted,
demonstrated by the art of the novelist in the only
possible way in which the task can be performed:
by the independent creation of circumstance and
character, achieved against all the difficulties of
expression, in an imaginative effort finding its in-
spiration from the reality of forms and sensations.
That a sacrifice must be made, that something has
to be given up, is the truth engraved in the inner-
most recesses of the fair temple built for our
edification by the masters of fiction. There is no
other secret behind the curtain. All adventure, all
love, every success is resumed in the supreme
energy of an act of renunciation. It is the utter-
most limit of our power; it is the most potent and
effective force at our disposal on which rest the
labours of a solitary man in his study, the rock on
which have been built commonwealths whose might
casts a dwarfing shadow upon two oceans. Like
a natural force which is obscured as much as
illuminated by the multiplicity of phenomena, the
power of renunciation is obscured by the mass of

20 HENRY JAMES

weaknesses, vacillations, secondary motives and
false steps and compromises which make up the
sum of our activity. But no man or woman
worthy of the name can pretend to anything more,
to anything greater. And Mr. Henry James's men
and women are worthy of the name, within the
limits his art, so clear, so sure of itself, has drawn
round their activities. He would be the last to
claim for them Titanic proportions. The earth
itself has grown smaller in the course of ages. But
in every sphere of human perplexities and emo-
tions, there are more greatnesses than one — not
counting here the greatness of the artist himself.
Wherever he stands, at the beginning or the end
of things, a man has to sacrifice his gods to his
passions, or his passions to his gods. That is the
problem, great enough, in all truth, if approached
in the spirit of sincerity and knowledge.

In one of his critical studies, published some
fifteen years ago, Mr. Henry James claims for the
novelist the standing of the historian as the only
adequate one, as for himself and before his audi-
ence. I think that the claim cannot be contested,
and that the position is unassailable. Fiction is
history, human history, or it is nothing. But it
is also more than that ; it stands on firmer ground,
being based on the reality of forms and the obser-
vation of social phenomena, whereas history is
based on documents, and the reading of print and

HENRY JAMES 21

handwriting — on second-hand impression. Thus-
fiction is nearer truth. But let that pass. A his-
torian may be an artist too, and a novehst is a
historian, the preserver, the keeper, the expounder,
of human experience. As is meet for a man of his
descent and tradition, Mr. Henry James is the
historian of fine consciences.

Of course, this is a general statement; but I
don't think its truth will be, or can be questioned.
Its fault is that it leaves so much out; and,
besides, Mr. Henry James is much too consider-
able to be put into the nutshell of a phrase. The
fact remains that he has made his choice, and that
his choice is justified up to the hilt by the success
of his art. He has taken for himself the greater
part. The range of a fine conscience covers more
good and evil than the range of conscience which
may be called, roughly, not fine; a conscience,
less troubled by the nice discrimination of shades
of conduct. A fine conscience is more concerned
with essentials; its triumphs are more perfect, if
less profitable, in a worldly sense. There is, in
short, more truth in its working for a historian to
detect and to show. It is a thing of infinite com-
pHcation and suggestion. None of these escapes
the art of Mr. Henry James. He has mastered the
country, his domain, not wild indeed, but full of
romantic glimpses, of deep shadows and sunny
places. There are no secrets left within his range.

22 HENRY JAMES

He has disclosed them as they should be disclosed
— that is, beautifully. And, indeed, ugliness has
but little place in this world of his creation. Yet,
it is always felt in the truthfulness of his art ; it is
there, it surrounds the scene, it presses close upon
it. It is made visible, tangible, in the struggles, in
the contacts of the fine consciences, in their per-
plexities, in the sophism of their mistakes. For a
fine conscience is naturally a virtuous one. What
is natural about it is just its fineness, an abiding
sense of the intangible, ever-present, right. It is
most visible in their ultimate triumiph, in their
emergence from miracle, through an energeticact
of remmciation. Energetic, not violent: the dis-
tinction is wide, enormous, like that between
substance and shadow.

Through it all Mr. Henry James keeps a firm
hold of the substance, of what is worth having,
of what is worth holding. The contrary opinion
has been, if not absolutely affirmed, then at least
impHed, with some frequency. To most of us,
living wilHngly in a sort of intellectual moonlight,
in the faintly reflected light of truth, the shadows
so firmly renounced by Mr. Henry James's men
and women, stand out endowed with extraordinary
value, with a value so extraordinary that their re-
jection offends, by its uncalled-for scrupulousness,
those business-Hke instincts which a careful Pro-
vidence has implanted in our breasts. And, apart

HENRY JAMES 23

from that just cause of discontent, it is obvious
that a solution by rejection must always present
a certain lack of finality, especially startling when
contrasted with the usual methods of solution by
rewards and punishments, by crowned love, by
fortune, by a broken leg or a sudden death. Why
the reading public which, as a body, has never laid
upon a story-teller the command to be an artist,
should demand from him this sham of Divine
Omnipotence, is utterly incomprehensible. But so
it is; and these solutions are legitimate inasmuch
as they satisfy the desire for finaHty, for which
our hearts yearn with a longing greater than the
longing for the loaves and fishes of this earth.
Perhaps the only true desire of mankind, coming
thus to Hght in its hours of leisure, is to be set at
rest. One is never set at rest by Mr. Henry James's
novels. His books end as an episode in life ends.
You remain with the sense of the Hfe still going on;
and even the subtle presence of the dead is felt in
that silence that comes upon the artist-creation
when the last word has been read. It is eminently
satisfying, but it is not final. Mr. Henry James,
great artist and faithful historian, never attempts
the impossible.

ALPHONSE DAUDET

1898

It is sweet to talk decorously of the dead who
are part of our past, our indisputable possession.
One must admit regretfully that to-day is but a
scramble, that to-morrow may never come; it is
only the precious yesterday that cannot be taken
away from us, A gift from the dead, great and
little, it makes hfe supportable, it almost makes
one beheve in a benevolent scheme of creation.
And some kind of belief is very necessary. But
the real knowledge of matters infinitely more pro-
found than any conceivable scheme of creation is
with the dead alone. That is why our talk about
them should be as decorous as their silence. Their
generosity and their discretion deserve nothing less
at our hands; and they, who belong already to the
unchangeable, would probably disdain to claim
more than this from a mankind that changes its
loves and its hates about every twenty-five years —
at the coming of every new and wiser generation.

One of the most generous of the dead is Daudet,
who, with a prodigality approaching magnificence,

25

26 ALPHONSE DAUDET

gave himself up to us without reserve in his
j/ work, with all his qualities and all his faults.
Neither his qualities nor his faults were great,
though they were by no means imperceptible. It
is only his generosity that is out of the common.
Whsit strikes one most in his work is the disin-
terestedness of the toiler. With more talent than
many bigger men, he did not preach about him-
self, he did not attempt to persuade mankind into
a belief of his own greatness. He never posed as a
scientist or as a seer, not even as a prophet; and
he neglected his interests to the point of never
propounding a theory for the purpose of giving a
tremendous significance to his art, alone of all
things, in a world that, by some strange oversight,
has not been supplied with an obvious meaning.
"^^ Neither did he affect a passive attitude before the
spectacle of life, an attitude which in gods — and in
a rare mortal here and there — may appear godlike,
but assumed by some men, causes one, very un-
willingly, to think of the melancholy quietude of
an ape. He was not the wearisome expounder
of this or that theory, here to-day and spurned
to-morrow. He was not a great artist, he was
not an artist at all, if you like — but he was
Alphonse Daudet, a man as naively clear, honest,
and vibrating as the sunshine of his native land;
that regrettably undiscriminating sunshine which
matures grapes and pumpkins alike, and cannot,

ALPHONSE DAUDET 27

of course, obtain the commendation of the very
select who look at Hfe from under a parasol.

Naturally, being a man from the South, he had
a rather outspoken behef in himself, but his small
distinction, worth many a greater, was in not
being in bondage to some vanishing creed. He
was a worker who could not compel the admira-
tion of the few, but who deserved the affection of
the many; and he may be spoken of with tender-
ness and regret, for he is not immortal — ^he is only
dead. During his hfe the simple mian whose busi-
ness it ought to have been to climb, in the name of
Art, some elevation or other, was content to remain
below, on the plain, amongst his creations, and
take an eager part in those disasters, weaknesses,
and joys which are tragic enough in their droll way,
but are by no means so momentous and profound
as some writers — ^probably for the sake of Art —
would hke to make us beheve. There is, when one
thinks of it, a considerable want of candour in the
august view of hfe. Without doubt a cautious
reticence on the subject, or even a delicately false
suggestion thrown out in that direction is, in a
way, praiseworthy, since it helps to uphold the
dignity of man — a matter of great importance, as
anyone can see; still one cannot help feehng that
a certain amount of sincerity would not be wholly
blamable. To state, then, with studied moderation
a behef that in unfortunate moments of lucidity

28 ALPHONSE DAUDET

is irresistibly borne in upon most of us — ^the blind •
agitation caused mostly by hunger and compli-
cated by love and ferocity does not deserve either
by its beauty, or its morality, or its possible results,
the artistic fuss made over it. It may be consoling
— for human folly is very bizarre — but it is scarcely
honest to shout at those who struggle drowning in
an insignificant pool: You are indeed admirable
and great to be the victims of such a profound, of
such a terrible ocean !

And Daudet was honest; perhaps because he
knew no better — but he was very honest. If he saw
only the surface of things it is for the reason that •
most things have nothing but a surface. He did not
pretend — perhaps because he did not know how
— ^he did not pretend to see any depths in a Hfe
that is only a film of unsteady appearances
stretched over regions deep indeed, but which
have nothing to do with the half-truths, half-
thoughts, and whole illusions of existence. The •
road to these distant regions does not lie through
the domain of Art or the domain of Science where
well-known voices quarrel noisily in a misty empti-
ness; it is a path of toilsome silence upon which
travel men simple and unknown, with closed lips,
or, maybe, whispering their pain softly— -only to
themselves.

But Daudet did not whisper; he spoke loudly,
with animation, with a clear felicity of tone — as a

ALPHONSE DAUDET 29

bird sings. He saw life around him with extreme
clearness, and he felt it as it is — thinner than air
and more elusive than a flash of lightning. He
hastened to offer it his compassion, his indigna-
tion, his wonder, his sympathy, without giving a
moment of thought to the momentous issues
that are supposed to lurk in the logic of such
sentiments. He tolerated the little foibles, the
small ruffianisms, the grave mistakes; the only
thing he distinctly would not forgive was hard-
ness of heart. This unpractical attitude would
have been fatal to a better man, but his readers
have forgiven him. Withal he is chivalrous to
exiled queens and deformed sempstresses, he is
pityingly tender to broken-down actors, to ruined
gentlemen, to stupid Academicians; he is glad of
the joys of the commonplace people in a common-
place way — and he never makes a secret of all
this. No, the man was not an artist. What if his
creations are illumined by the sunshine of his
temperament so vividly that they stand before us
infinitely more real than the dingy illusions sur-
rounding our everyday existence ? The misguided
man is for ever pottering amongst them, lifting up
his voice, dotting his i's in the wrong places. He
takes Tartarin by the arm, he does not conceal
his interest in the Nabob's cheques, his sympathy
for an honest Academician plus bete que nature,
his hate for an architect plus mauvais que la gale;

30 ALPHONSE DAUDET

he is in the thick of it all. He feels with the Due de
Mora and with Felicia Ruys — and he lets you see
it. He does not sit on a pedestal in the hieratic
and imbecile pose of some cheap god whose great-
ness consists in being too stupid to care. He cares
immensely for his Nabobs, his kings, his book-
keepers, his Colettes, and his Saphos. He vibrates
together with his universe, and with lamentable
simplicity follows M. de Montpavon on that last
walk along the Boulevards.

" Monsieur de Montpavon marche a la mort,"
and the creator of that unlucky gentilhomme follows
with stealthy footsteps, with wide eyes, with an
impressively pointing finger. And who wouldn't
look ? But it is hard; it is sometimes very hard to
forgive him the dotted i's, the pointing finger, this
making plain of obvious mysteries. " Monsieur
de Montpavon marche a la mort," and presently,
on the crowded pavement, takes off his hat with
punctiHous courtesy to the doctor's wife, who,
elegant and unhappy, is bound on the same pil-
grimage. This is too much! We feel we cannot
forgive him such meetings, the constant whisper
of his presence. We feel we cannot, till suddenly
the very naivete of it all touches us with the
revealed suggestion of a truth. Then we see that
the man is not false; all this is done in trans-
parent good faith. The man is not melodramatic;
he is only picturesque. He may not be an artist.

ALPHONSE DAUDET 31

but he comes as near the truth as some of the
greatest. His creations are seew, you can look
into their Ytiy eyes, and these are as thoughtless
as the eyes of any wise generation that has in its
hands the fame of writers. Yes, they are seen, and
the man who is not an artist is seen also commiser-
ating, indignant, joyous, human and alive in their
very midst. Inevitably they marchent a la mort —
and they are very near the truth of our common
destiny: their fate is poignant, it is intensely
interesting, and of not the slightest consequence.

GUY DE MAUPASSANT^

1904

To introduce Maupassant to English readers with
apologetic explanations as though his art were re-
condite and the tendency of his work immoral
would be a gratuitous impertinence.

Maupassant's conception of his art is such as
one would expect from a practical and resolute
mind; but in the consummate simpHcity of his
technique it ceases to be perceptible. This is one
of its greatest qualities, and Hke all the great •
virtues it is based primarily on self-denial.

To pronounce a judgment upon the general
tendency of an author is a difficult task. One
could not depend upon reason alone, nor yet trust
solely to one's emotions. Used together, they
would in many cases traverse each other, because
emotions have their own unanswerable logic. Our*
capacity for emotion is Hmited, and the field of
our intelligence is restricted. Responsiveness to
every feehng, combined with the penetration of
every intellectual subterfuge, would end, not in
judgment, but in universal absolution. Tout com--

» Yvette and Other Stories. Translated by Ada Galsworthy.

34 GUY DE MAUPASSANT

-prendre c^est tout pardonner. And in this benevolent
neutrality towards the warring errors of human
nature all light would go out from art and from hfe.

We are at liberty then to quarrel with Maupas-
sant's attitude towards our world in which, Hke
the rest of us, he has that share which his senses
are able to give him. But we need not quarrel with
him violently. If our feehngs (which are tender)
happen to be hurt because his talent is not exer-
cised for the praise and consolation of mankind,
our intelligence (which is great) should let us see
that he is a very splendid sinner, like all those who
in this valley of compromises err by over-devotion •
to the truth that is in them. His determinism,
barren of praise, blame and consolation, has all__
the merit of his conscientious art. The worth of .
every conviction consists precisely in the stead-
fastness with which it is held.

Except for his philosophy, which in the case of
so consummate an artist does not matter (unless to •
the solemn and naive mind), Maupassant of all
writers of fiction demands least forgiveness from
his readers. He does not require forgiveness
because he is never dull.

The interest of a reader in a work of imagina-
tion is either ethical or that of simple curiosity. *
Both are perfectly legitimate, since there is both a
moral and an excitement to be found in a faithful
rendering of life. And in Maupassant's work there

GUY DE MAUPASSANT 35

is the interest of curiosity and the moral of a point
of view consistently preserved and never obtruded
for the end of personal gratification. The spectacle
of this immense talent served by exceptional facul-
ties and triumphing over the most thankless subjects
by an unswerving singleness of purpose is in itself
an admirable lesson in the power of artistic honesty,
one may say of artistic virtue. The inherent great- ■
ness of the man consists in this, that he will let
none of the fascinations that beset a writer working
in loneHness turn him away from the straight path,
from the vouchsafed vision of excellence. He will
not be led into perdition by the seductions of senti-
ment, of eloquence, of humour, of pathos; of all
that splendid pageant of faults that pass between
the writer and his probity on the blank sheet of
paper, hke the ghttering cortege of deadly sins
before the austere anchorite in the desert air of
Thebaide. This is not to say that Maupassant's
austerity has never faltered; but the fact remains
that no tempting demon has ever succeeded in
hurling him down from his high, if narrow, pedestal.
It is the austerity of his talent, of course, that
is in question. Let the discriminating reader, who
at times may well spare a moment or two to the
consideration and enjoyment of artistic excellence,
be asked to reflect a Httle upon the texture of two
stories included in this volume : " A Piece of
String," and " A Sale." How many openings the

36 GUY DE MAUPASSANT

last offers for the gratuitous display of the author's
wit or clever buffoonery, the first for an unmea-
sured display of sentiment! And both sentiment
and buffoonery could have been made very good
too, in a way accessible to the meanest intelligence,
at the cost of truth and honesty. Here it is where
Maupassant's austerity comes in. He refrains from
setting his cleverness against the eloquence of the
facts. There is humour and pathos in these stories;
but such is the greatness of his talent, the refine-
ment of his artistic conscience, that all his high
qualities appear inherent in the very things of
which he speaks, as if they had been altogether
independent of his presentation. Facts, and again
facts are his unique concern. That is why he is
not always properly understood. His facts are so
perfectly rendered that, Hke the actuahties of life
itself, they demand from the reader the faculty of
observation which is rare, the power of apprecia-
tion which is generally wanting in most of us who
are guided mainly by empty phrases requiring no
effort, demanding from us no qualities except a
vague susceptibility to emotion. Nobody has ever
gained the vast applause of a crowd by the simple
and clear exposition of vital facts. Words alone
strung upon a convention have fascinated us as
worthless glass beads strung on a thread have
charmed at all times our brothers the unsophisti-
cated savages of the islands. Now, Maupassant, of

GUY DE MAUPASSANT 37

whom it has been said that he is the master of the
mot juste, has never been a dealer in words. His
wares have been, not glass beads, but polished
gems; not the most rare and precious, perhaps,
but of the very first water of their kind.

That he took trouble with his gems, taking them
up in the rough and polishing each facet patiently,
the pubhcation of the two posthumous volumes of
short stories proves abundantly. I think it proves
also the assertion made here that he was by no
means a dealer in words. On looking at the first
feeble drafts from which so many perfect stories
have been fashioned, one discovers that what has
been matured, improved, brought to perfection by
unwearied endeavour is not the diction of the tale,
but the vision of its true shape and detail. Those
first attempts are not faltering or uncertain in
expression. It is the conception which is at fault.
The subjects have not yet been adequately seen.
His proceeding was not to group expressive words, .
that mean nothing, around misty and mysterious
shapes dear to muddled intellects and belonging
neither to earth nor to heaven. His vision by a more
scrupulous, prolonged and devoted attention to the
aspects of the visible world discovered at last the
right words as if miraculously impressed for him
upon the face of things and events. This was the
particular shape taken by his inspiration: it came
to him directly, honestly in the Hght of his day,

38 GUY DE MAUPASSANT

not on the tortuous, dark roads of meditation.
His realities came to him from a genuine source,
from this universe of vain appearances wherein
we men have found everything to make us proud,
sorry, exalted, and humble.

Maupassant's renown is universal, but his popu-
larity is restricted. It is not difficult to perceive why.
Maupassant is an intensely national writer. He is
so intensely national in his logic, in his clearness,
in his aesthetic and moral conceptions, that he has
been accepted by his countrymen without having
had to pay the tribute of flattery either to the
nation as a whole, or to any class, sphere or division
of the nation. The truth of his art tells with an
irresistible force; and he stands excused from the
duty of patriotic posturing. He is a Frenchman of
Frenchmen beyond question or cavil, and with that
he is simple enough to be universally comprehen-
sible. What is wanting to his universal success is
the mediocrity of an obvious and appealing tender-
ness. He neglects to qualify his truth with the drop
of facile sweetness; he forgets to strew paper roses
over the tombs. The disregard of these common
decencies lays him open to the charges of cruelty,
cynicism, hardness. And yet it can be safely
affirmed that this man wrote from the fulness of a
compassionate heart. He is merciless and yet
gentle with his mankind; he does not rail at their
prudent fears and their small artifices ; he does not

GUY DE MAUPASSANT 39

despise their labours. It seems to me that he looks
with an eye of profound pity upon their troubles,
deceptions and misery. But he looks at them all.
He sees — and does not turn awa_y_his head. As a
matter of fact he is courageous. --— ^—

Courage and justice are not popular virtues. The
practice of strict justice is shocking to the multi-
tude who always (perhaps from an obscure sense
of guilt) attach to it the meaning of mercy. In the
majority of us, who want to be left alone with our
illusions, courage inspires a vague alarm. This is
what is felt about Maupassant. His quahties, to
use the charming and popular phrase, are not
lovable. Courage being a force will not masquerade
in the robes of affected delicacy and restraint. But
if his courage is not of a chivalrous stamp, it can-
not be denied that it is never brutal for the sake of
effect. The writer of these few reflections, inspired
by a long and intimate acquaintance with the work
of the man, has been struck by the appreciation of
Maupassant manifested by many women gifted
with tenderness and intelligence. Their more
deUcate and audacious souls are good judges of
courage. Their finer penetration has discovered
his genuine mascuHnity without display, his viriHty
without a pose. They have discerned in his faithful
deaHngs with the world that enterprising and fear-
less temperament, poor in ideas but rich in power,
which appeals most to the feminine mind.

40 GUY DE MAUPASSANT

It cannot be denied that he thinks very little.
In him extreme energy of perception achieves great
results, as in men of action the energy of force and
desire. His view of intellectual problems is perhaps
more simple than their nature warrants; still a
man who has written Tvette cannot be accused of
want of subtlety. But one cannot insist enough
upon this, that his subtlety, his humour, his grim-
ness, though no doubt they are his own, are never
presented otherwise but as belonging to our hfe, as
found in nature, whose beauties and cruelties alike
breathe the spirit of serene unconsciousness.

Maupassant's philosophy of Hfe is more tem-
peramental than rational. He expects nothing
from gods or men. He trusts his senses for
information and his instinct for deductions. It
may seem that he has made but little use of his
mind. But let me be clearly understood. His
sensibility is really very great; and it is impos-
sible to be sensible, unless one thinks vividly,
unless one thinks correctly, starting from intelli-
gible premises to an unsophisticated conclusion.

This is Hterary honesty. It may be remarked
that it does not differ very greatly from the ideal
honesty of the respectable majority, from the
honesty of law-givers, of warriors, of kings, of
bricklayers, of all those who express their funda-
mental sentiment in the ordinary course of their
activities, by the work of their hands.

GUY DE MAUPASSANT 41

The work of Maupassant's hands is honest. He
thinks sufficiently to concrete his fearless conclu-
sions in illuminative instances. He renders them
with that exact knowledge of the means and that
absolute devotion to the aim of creating a true
effect — which is art. He is the most accompHshed
of narrators.

It is evident that Maupassant looked upon his
mankind in another spirit than those writers who
make haste to submerge the difficulties of our
holding-place in the universe under a flood of false
and sentimental assumptions. Maupassant was a
true and dutiful lover of our earth. He says him-
self in one of his descriptive passages : " Nous
autres que seduit la terre . . ." It was true. The
earth had for him a com.peUing charm. He looks
upon her august and furrowed face with the fierce
insight of real passion. His is the power of detect-
ing the one immutable quality that matters in the
changing aspects of nature and under the ever-
shifting surface of Hfe. To say that he could not
embrace in his glance all its magnificence and all
its misery is only to say that he was human. He
lays claim to nothing that his matchless vision has
not made his own. This creative artist has the
true imagination; he never condescends to invent
anything; he sets up no empty pretences. And he
stoops to no littleness in his art — least of all to the
miserable vanity of a catching phrase.

ANATOLE FRANCE

1904

I

" Crainquebille "

The latest volume of M. Anatole France purports,
by the declaration of its title-page, to contain
several profitable narratives. The story of Crain-
quebille's encounter with human justice stands at
the head of them; a tale of a well-bestowed charity
closes the book with the touch of playful irony
characteristic of the writer on whom the most dis-
tinguished amongst his hterary countrymen have
conferred the rank of Prince of Prose.

Never has a dignity been better borne. M. Ana*
tole France is a good prince. He knows nothing of
tyranny but much of compassion. The detachment
of his mind from common errors and current super-
stitions befits the exalted rank he holds in the
Commonwealth of Literature. It is just to suppose
that the clamour of the tribes in the forum had
little to do with his elevation. Their elect are of
another stamp. They are such as their need of
precipitate action requires. He is the Elect of the

43

44 ANATOLE FRANCE

Senate — the Senate of Letters — whose Conscript
Fathers have recognised him as primus inter pares \
a post of pure honour and of no privilege.

It is a good choice. First, because it is just, and
next, because it is safe. The dignity will suffer no
diminution in M. Anatole France's hands. He is
worthy of a great tradition, learned in the lessons
of the past, concerned with the present, and as
earnest as to the future as a good prince should be
in his pubhc action. It is a RepubHcan dignity.
And M. Anatole France, with his sceptical insight
into all forms of government, is a good RepubHcan.
He is indulgent to the weaknesses of the people,
and perceives that political institutions, whether
contrived by the wisdom of the few or the ignor-
ance of the many, are incapable of securing the
happiness of mankind. He perceives this truth in
the serenity of his soul and in the elevation of his
mind. He expresses his convictions with measure,
restraint and harmony, which are indeed princely
quaHties. He is a great analyst of illusions. He
searches and probes their innermost recesses as if
they were reaUties made of an eternal substance.
And therein consists his humianity; this is the ex-
pression of his profound and unalterable compas-
sion. He will flatter no tribe, no section in the
forum or in the market-place. His lucid thought is
not beguiled into false pity or into the common
weakness of affection. He feels that men born

ANATOLE FRANCE 45

in ignorance as in the house of an enemy, and
condemned to struggle with error and passions
through endless centuries, should be spared the
supreme cruelty of a hope for ever deferred. He
knows that our best hopes are irreahsable; that
it is the almost incredible misfortune of mankind,
but also its highest privilege, to aspire towards
the impossible; that men have never failed to
defeat their highest aims by the very strength
of their humanity which can conceive the most
gigantic tasks but leaves them disarmed before
their irremediable littleness. He knows this well
because he is an artist and a master; but he
knows, too, that only in the continuity of effort
there is a refuge from despair for minds less clear-
seeing and philosophic than his own. Therefore
he wishes us to beheve and to hope, preserving in
our activity the consohng illusion of power and
intelligent purpose. He is a good and politic
prince.

" The majesty of Justice is contained entire in
each sentence pronounced by the judge in the
name of the sovereign people. Jerome Crainque-
bille, hawker of vegetables, became aware of the
august aspect of the law as he stood indicted
before the tribunal of the higher PoHce Court on
a charge of insulting a constable of the force."
With this exposition begins the first tale of M.
Anatole France's latest volume.

46 ANATOLE FRANCE

The bust of the RepubHc and the image of the
Crucified Christ appear side by side above the
bench occupied by the President Bourriche and
his two Assessors; all the laws divine and human
are suspended over the head of Crainquebille.

From the first visual impression of the accused
and of the court the author passes by a charac-
teristic and natural turn to the historical and
moral significance of those two emblems of State
and Religion whose accord is only possible to the
confused reasoning of an average man. But the
reasoning of M. Anatole France is never confused.
His reasoning is clear and informed by a profound
erudition. Such is not the case of Crainquebille,
a street hawker, charged with insulting the con-
stituted power of society in the person of a police-
man. The charge is not true, nothing was further
from his thoughts; but, amazed by the novelty of
his position, he does not reflect that the Cross on
the wall perpetuates the memory of a sentence
which for nineteen hundred years all the Christian
peoples have looked upon as a grave miscarriage
of justice. He might well have challenged the
President to pronounce any sort of sentence, if it
were merely to forty-eight hours of simple imprison-
ment, in the name of the Crucified Redeemer.

He might have done so. But Crainquebille, who
has hved pushing every day for half a century his
hand-barrow loaded with vegetables through the

ANATOLE FRANCE 47

streets of Paris, has not a philosophic mind. Truth
to say he has nothing. He is one of the disinherited.
Properly speaking, he has no existence at all, or,
to be strictly truthful, he had no existence till
M. Anatole France's philosophic mind and human
sympathy have called him up from his nothing-
ness for our pleasure, and, as the title-page of the
book has it, no doubt for our profit also.

Therefore we behold him in the dock, a stranger
to all historical, political or social considerations
which can be brought to bear upon his case. He
remains lost in astonishment. Penetrated with
respect, overwhelmed with awe, he is ready to
trust the judge upon the question of his trans-
gression. In his conscience he does not think
himself culpable; but M. Anatole France's philo-
sophical mind discovers for us that he feels all
the insignificance of such a thing as the con-
science of a mere street-hawker in the face of the
symbols of the law and before the ministers of
social repression. Crainquebille is innocent; but
already the young advocate, his defender, has half
persuaded him of his guilt.

On this phrase practically ends the introductory
chapter of the story which, as the author's dedica-
tion states, has inspired an admirable draughtsman
and a skilful dramatist, each in his art, to a vision
of tragic grandeur. And this opening chapter with-
out a name — consisting of two and a half pages,

48 ANATOLE FRANCE

some four hundred words at most — is a master-
piece of insight and simpHcity, resumed in M.
Anatole France's distinction of thought and in
his princely command of words.

It is followed by six more short chapters, concise
and full, dehcate and complete hke the petals of a
flower, presenting to us the Adventure of Crain-
quebille — Crainquebille before the Justice — An
Apology for the President of the Tribunal — Of the
Submission of Crainquebille to the Laws of the
Republic — Of his Attitude before the Public
Opinion,, and so on to the chapter of the Last
Consequences. We see, created for us in his out-
ward form and innermost perplexity, the old man
degraded from his high estate of a law-abiding
street-hawker and driven to insult, really this
timie, the majesty of the social order in the person
of another poHce-constable. It is not an act of
revolt, and still less of revenge. Crainquebille is
too old, too resigned, too weary, too guileless to
raise the black standard of insurrection. He is
cold and homeless and starving. He remembers
the warmth and the food of the prison. He per-
ceives the means to get back there. Since he has
been locked up, he argues with himself, for utter-
ing words which, as a matter of fact he did not
say, he will go forth now, and to the first police-
man he meets wiU say those very words in order
to be imprisoned again. Thus reasons Crainque-

ANATOLE FRANCE 49

bille with simplicity and confidence. He accepts
facts. Nothing surprises him. But all the pheno-
mena of social organisation and of his own life
remain for him mysterious to the end. The de-
scription of the policeman in his short cape and
hood, who stands quite still, under the Hght of a
street ]amp at the edge of the pavement shining
with the wet of a rainy autumn evening along the
whole extent of a long and deserted thoroughfare,
is a perfect piece of imaginative precision. From
under the edge of the hood his eyes look upon
Crainquebille, who has just uttered in an uncertain
voice the sacramental, insulting phrase of the popu-
lar slang — Mort aux vaches I They look upon him
shining in the deep shadow of the hood with an
expression of sadness, vigilance, and contempt.

He does not move. Crainquebille, in a feeble
and hesitating voice, repeats once more the insult-
ing words. But this policeman is full of philosophic
superiority, disdain, and indulgence. He refuses to
take in charge the old and miserable vagabond who
stands before him shivering and ragged in the
drizzle. And the ruined Crainquebille, victim of a
ridiculous miscarriage of justice, appalled at this
magnanimity, passes on hopelessly down the street
full of shadows where the lamps gleam each in a
ruddy halo of faUing mist.

M. Anatole France can speak for the people.
This prince of the Senate is invested with the

so ANATOLE FRANCE

tribunitian power. M. Anatole France is some-
thing of a Socialist; and in that respect he seems
to depart from his sceptical philosophy. But as
an illustrious statesman, now no more, a great
prince too, with an ironic mind and a Hterary
gift, has sarcastically remarked in one of his pub-
lic speeches : " We are all Socialists now." And
in the sense in which it may be said that we
all in Europe are Christians that is true enough.
To many of us Socialism is merely an emotion.
An emotion is much and is also less than nothing.
It is the initial impulse. The real Socialism of
to-day is a religion. It has its dogmas. The value of
the dogma does not consist in its truthfulness, and
M. Anatole France, who loves truth, does not love
dogma. Only, unlike rehgion, the cohesive strength
of Socialism lies not in its dogmas but in its ideal.
It is perhaps a too materiahstic ideal, and the mind
of M. Anatole France may not find in it either com-
fort or consolation. It is not to be doubted that he
suspects this himself; but there is something re-
poseful in the finality of popular conceptions. M.
Anatole France, a good prince and a good Repub-
lican, will succeed no doubt in being a good
Socialist. He will disregard the stupidity of the
dogma and the unlovely form of the ideal. His
art will find its own beauty in the imaginative
presentation of wrongs, of errors, and miseries
that call aloud for redress. M. Anatole France

ANATOLE FRANCE 51

is humane. He is also human. He may be able to
discard his philosophy; to forget that the evils
are many and the remedies are few, that there is
no universal panacea, that fatality is invincible,
that there is an implacable menace of death in the
triumph of the humanitarian idea. He may forget
all that because love is stronger than truth.

Besides " Crainquebille " this volume contains
sixteen other stories and sketches. To define them it
is enough to say that they are written in M. Anatole
France's prose. One sketch entitled " Riquet " may
be found incorporated in the volume of Monsieur
Bergeret a Paris, *' Putois " is a remarkable little
tale, significant, humorous, amusing, and symboHc.
It concerns the career of a man born in the utterance
of a hasty and untruthful excuse made by a lady
at a loss how to decline without offence a very
pressing invitation to dinner from a very tyran-
nical aunt. This happens in a provincial town,
and the lady says in effect: '^ Impossible, my dear
aunt. To-morrow I am expecting the gardener."
And the garden she glances at is a poor garden;
it is a wild garden; its extent is insignificant and
its neglect seems beyond remedy. " A gardener!
What for \ " asks the aunt. " To work in the
garden." And the poor lady is abashed at the
transparence of her evasion. But the He is told,
it is beheved, and she sticks to it. When the

52 ANATOLE FRANCE

masterful old aunt inquires, " What is the man's

name, my dear ? " she answers brazenly, " His
name is Putois." " Where does he live ? " " Oh,
I don't know; anywhere. He won't give his
address. One leaves a message for him here and
there." *' Oh! I see," says the other; "he is a
sort of ne'er do well, an idler, a vagabond. I
advise you, my dear, to be careful how you let
such a creature into your grounds; but I have
a large garden, and when you do not want his
services I shall find him some work to do, and sec
he does it too. Tell your Putois to come and see
me." And thereupon Putois is born; he stalks
abroad, invisible, upon his career of vagabondage
and crime, steaHng melons from gardens and tea-
spoons from pantries, indulging his Hcentious
proclivities; becoming the talk of the town and
of the countryside; seen simultaneously in far-
distant places ; pursued by gendarmes, whose
brigadier assures the uneasy householders that he
" knows that scamp very well, and won't be long
in laying his hands upon him." A detailed de-
scription of his person collected from the informa-
tion furnished by various people appears in the
columns of a local newspaper. Putois lives in his
strength and malevolence. He Hves after the
manner of legendary heroes, of the gods of Olym-
pus. He is the creation of the popular mind. There
comes a time when even the innocent originator of

ANATOLE FRANCE 53

that mysterious and potent evil-doer is induced to
believe for a moment that he may have a real and
tangible presence. All this is told with the wit and
the art and the philosophy which is familiar to M.
Anatole France's readers and admirers. For it is
difficult to read M. Anatole France without ad-
miring him. He has the princely gift of arousing a
spontaneous loyalty, but with this difference, that
the consent of our reason has its place by the side
of our enthusiasm. He is an artist. As an artist he
awakens emotion. The qaahty of his art remains,
as an inspiration, fascinating and inscrutable; but
the proceedings of his thought compel our intel-
lectual admiration.

In this volume the trifle called "The Military
Manoeuvres at Montil," apart from its far-reaching
irony, embodies incidentally the very spirit of auto-
mobiHsm. Somehow or other, how you cannot telj,
the flight over the country in a motor-car, its
sensations, its fatigue, its vast topographical range,
its incidents down to the bursting of a tyre, are
brought home to you with all the force of high
imaginative perception. It would be out of place
to analyse here the m^eans by which the true im-
pression is conveyed so that the absurd rushing
about of General Decuir, in a 30-horse-power car,
in search of his cavalry brigade, becomes to you a
more real experience than any day-and-night run
you may ever have taken yourself. Suffice it to

54 ANATOLE FRANCE

say that M. Anatole France had thought the thing
worth doing and that it becomes, in virtue of his
art, a distinct achievement. And there are other
sketches in this book, more or less slight, but all
worthy of regard — the childhood's recollections of
Professor Bergeret and his sister Zoe; the dialogue
of the two upright judges and the conversation of
their horses; the dream of M. Jean Marteau, aim-
less, extravagant, apocalyptic, and of all the dreams
one ever dreamt, the most essentially dreamlike.
The vision of M. Anatole France, the Prince of Prose,
ranges over all the extent of his realm, indulgent
and penetrating, disillusioned and curious, finding
treasures of truth and beauty concealed from less
gifted magicians. Contemplating the exactness of
his images and the justice of his judgment, the
freedom of his fancy and the fidelity of his pur-
pose, one becomes aware of the futihty of literary
watch-words and the vanity of all the schools of
fiction. Not that M. Anatole France is a wild and
untrammelled genius. He is not that. Issued
legitimately from the past, he is mindful of liis
high descent. He has a critical temperament joined
to creative power. He surveys his vast domain in
a spirit of princely moderation that knows nothing
of excesses but much of restraint.

ANATOLE FRANCE 55

II

" L'Ile des Pingouins "

M. Anatole France, historian and adventurer,
has given us many profitable histories of saints
and sinners, of Roman procurators and of officials
of the Third Republic, of grandes dames and of
dames not so very grand, of ornate Latinists
and of inarticulate street hawkers, of priests and
generals — in fact, the history of all humanity as
it appears to his penetrating eye, serving a mind
marvellously incisive in its scepticism, and a heart
that, of all contemporary hearts gifted with a voice,
contains the greatest treasure of charitable irony.
As to M. Anatole France's adventures, these are
well-known. They lie open to this prodigal world in
the four volumes of the Fie Litteraire, describing the
adventures of a choice soul amongst masterpieces.
For such is the romantic view M. Anatole France
takes of the life of a literary critic. History and
adventure, then, seem to be the chosen fields for
the magnificent evolutions of M. Anatole France's
prose; but no material limits can stand in the
way of a genius. The latest book from his pen
— which may be called golden, as the lips of an
eloquent saint once upon a time were acclaimed
golden by the faithful — this latest book is, up
to a certain point, a book of travel.

56 ANATOLE FRANCE

I would not mislead a public whose confidence I
court. The book is not a record of globe-trotting.
I regret it. It would have been a joy to watch
M. Anatole France pouring the clear ehxir com-
pounded of his Pyrrhonic philosophy, his Bene-
dictine erudition, his gentle wit and most humane
irony into such an unpromising and opaque vessel.
He would have attempted it in a spirit of bene-
volence towards his fellow men and of compassion
for that Hfe of the earth which is but a vain and
transitory illusion. M. Anatole France is a great
magician, yet there seem to be tasks which he dare
not face. For he is also a sage.

It is a book of ocean travel — not, however, as
understood by Herr Ballin of Hamburg, the Ma-
chiavel of the Atlantic. It is a book of exploration
and discovery — not, however, as conceived by an
enterprising journal and a shrewdly philanthropic
king of the nineteenth century. It is nothing so
recent as that. It dates much further back; long,
long before the dark age when Krupp of Essen
wrought at his steel plates and a German Emperor
condescendingly suggested the last improvements
in ships' dining-tables. The best idea of the incon-
ceivable antiquity of that enterprise I can give
you is by stating the nature of the explorer's ship.
It was a trough of stone, a vessel of hollowed
granite.

The explorer was St. Mael, a saint of Armorica.

ANATOLE FRANCE 57

I had never heard of him before, but I believe now
in his arduous existence with a faith which is a
tribute to M. Anatole France's pious earnestness
and deHcate irony. St. Mael existed. It is dis-
tinctly stated of him that his Hfe was a progress in
virtue. Thus it seems that there may be saints
that are not progressively virtuous. St. Mael was
not of that kind. He was industrious. He evan-
geUsed the heathen. He erected two hundred and
eighteen chapels and seventy-four abbeys. In-
defatigable navigator of the faith, he drifted
casually in the miraculous trough of stone from
coast to coast and from island to island along the
northern seas. At the age of eighty-four his high
stature was bowed by his long labours, but his
sine^^y arms preserved their vigour and his rude
eloquence had lost nothing of its force.

A nautical devil tempting him by the worldly
suggestion of fitting out his desultory, miraculous
trough with mast, sail, and rudder for swifter pro-
gression (the idea of haste has sprung from the
pride of Satan), the simple old saint lent his ear
to the subtle arguments of the progressive enemy
of mankind.

The venerable St. Mael fell away from grace by
not perceiving at once that a gift of heaven cannot
be improved by the contrivances of human in-
genuity. His punishment was adequate. A terrific
tempest snatched the rigged ship of stone in its

58 ANATOLE FRANCE

whirlwinds, and, to be brief, the dazed St. Mael
was stranded violently on the Island of Penguins.

The saint wandered away from the shore. It
was a flat, round island whence rose in the centre
a conical mountain capped with clouds. The rain
was falling incessantly — a gentle, soft rain which
caused the simple saint to exclaim in great de-
light : " This is the island of tears, the island of
contrition! "

Meantime the inhabitants had flocked in their
tens of thousands to an amphitheatre of rocks;
they were penguins; but the holy man, rendered
deaf and purblind by his years, mistook excusably
the multitude of silly, erect, and self-important
birds for a human crowd. At once he began to
preach to them the doctrine of salvation. Having
finished his discourse he lost no time in administer-
ing to his interesting congregation the sacrament
of baptism.

If you are at all a theologian you will see that
it was no mean adventure to happen to a well-
meaning and zealous saint. Pray reflect on the
magnitude of the issues! It is easy to beHeve
what M. Anatole France says, that, when the
baptism of the Penguins became known in Para-
dise, it caused there neither joy nor sorrow, but a
profound sensation.

M. Anatole France is no mean theologian him-
self. He reports with great casuistical erudition

ANATOLE FRANCE 59

the debates in the saintly council assembled in
Heaven for the consideration of an event so dis-
turbing to the economy of religious mysteries.
Ultimately the baptised Penguins had to be turned
into human beings ; and together with the privilege
of subhme hopes these innocent birds received
the curse of original sin, with the labours, the
miseries, the passions, and the weaknesses attached
to the fallen condition of humanity.

At this point M. Anatole France is again an
historian. From being the Hakluyt of a saintly
adventurer he turns (but more concisely) into the
Gibbon of Imperial Penguins. Tracing the de-
velopment of their civilisation, the absurdity of
their desires, the pathos of their folly and the
ridiculous httleness of their quarrels, his golden
pen Hghtens by relevant but unpuritanical anec-
dotes the austerity of a work devoted to a subject
so grave as the Polity of Penguins. It is a very
admirable treatment, and I hasten to congratulate
all men of receptive mind on the feast of wisdom
which is theirs for the mere plucking of a book
from a shelf.

TURGENEV^

1917

Dear Edward,

I am glad to hear that you are about to pubHsh
a study of Turgenev, that fortunate artist who
has found so much in life for us and no doubt for
himself, with the exception of bare justice. Perhaps
that will come to him, too, in time. Your study
may help the consummation. For his luck persists
after his death. What greater luck an artist Hke
Turgenev could wish for than to find in the EngHsh-
speaking world a translator who has missed none of
the most dehcate, most simple beauties of his work,
and a critic who has known how to analyse and
point out its high qualities with perfect sympathy
and insight.

After twenty odd years of friendship (and my
first Hterary friendship too) I may well permit
myself to make that statement, while thinking of
your wonderful Prefaces as they appeared from
time to time in the volumes of Turgenev's com-
plete edition, the last of which came into the hght
of pubHc indifference in the ninety-ninth year of
the nineteenth century.

^ Turgenev : A Study. By Edward Garnett.
61

r o A/ i^ A p

62 TURGENEV

(

With that year one may say, with some justice,
that the age of Turgenev had come to an end too;
yet work so simple and human, so independent
of the transitory formulas and theories of art,
belongs as you point out in the Preface to Smoke
" to aU time."

Turgenev's creative activity covers about thirty
years. Since it came to an end the social and
political events in Russia have moved at an ac-
celerated pace, but the deep origins of them, in
the moral and intellectual unrest of the souls, are
recorded in the whole body of his work with the
unerring lucidity of a great national writer. The
first stirrings, the first gleams of the great forces
can be seen almost in every page of the novels, of
the short stories and of A Sportsman^ s Sketches —
those marvellous landscapes peopled by unforget-
table figures.

Those will never grow old. Fashions in monsters
do change, but the truth of humanity goes on for
ever, unchangeable and inexhaustible in the variety
of its disclosures. Whether Turgenev's art, which
has captured it with such mastery and such gentle-
ness, is for " all time " it is hard to say. Since, as
you say yourself, he brings all his problems and
characters to the test of love, we may hope that it
will endure at least till the infinite emotions of
love are replaced by the exact simpHcity of per-
fected Eugenics. But even by then, I think, women

TURGENEV 63

would not have changed much; and the women
of Turgenev who understood them so tenderly, so
reverently and so passionately — they, at least, are
certainly for all time.

Women are, one may say, the foundation of his
art. They are Russian of course. Never was a
writer so profoundly, so whole-souledly national.
But for non-Russian readers, Turgenev's Russia
is but a canvas on which the incomparable artist
of humanity lays his colours and his forms in the
great hght and the free air of the world. Had he
invented them all and also every stick and stone,
brook and hill and field in which they move, his
personages would have been just as true and as
poignant in their perplexed Hves. They are his
own and also universal. Any one can accept them
with no more question than one accepts the ItaHans
of Shakespeare.

In the larger, non-Russian view, what should
make Turgenev sympathetic and welcome to the
Enghsh-speaking world, is his essential humanity.
All his creations, fortunate and unfortunate, op-
pressed and oppressors, are human beings, not
strange beasts in a menagerie or damned souls
knocking themselves to pieces in the stuffy dark-
ness of mystical contradictions. They are human
beings, fit to live, fit to suffer, fit to struggle, fit to
win, fit to lose, in the endless and inspiring game of
pursuing from day to day the ever-receding future.

64 TURGENEV

I began by calling him lucky, and he was, in a
sense. But one ends by having some doubts. To be
so great without the slightest parade and so fine
without any tricks of " cleverness " must be fatal
to any man's influence with his contemporaries.

Frankly, I don't want to appear as quaHiied to
judge of things Russian. It wouldn't be true. I
know nothing of them. But I am aware of a few
general truths, such as, for instance, that no man,
whatever may be the loftiness of his character, the
purity of his motives and the peace of his con-
science— no man, I say, likes to be beaten with
sticks during the greater part of his existence.
From what one knows of his history it appears
clearly that in Russia almost any stick was good
enough to beat Turgenev with in his latter years.
When he died the characteristically chicken-
hearted Autocracy hastened to stuff his mortal
envelope into the tomb it refused to honour,
while the sensitive Revolutionists went on for a
time flinging after his shade those jeers and curses
from which that impartial lover of all his country-
men had suffered so much in his lifetime. For he,
too, was sensitive. Every page of his writing bears
its testimony to the fatal absence of callousness in
the man.

And now he suffers a little from other things.
In truth it is not the convulsed terror-haunted
Dostoievski but the serene Turgenev who is under

TURGENEV 65

a curse. For only think! Every gift has been
heaped on his cradle: absolute sanity and the
deepest sensibility, the clearest vision and the
quickest responsiveness, penetrating insight and
unfaiHng generosity of judgment, an exquisite
perception of the visible world and an unerring
instinct for the significant, for the essential in
the life of men and women, the clearest mind,
the warmest heart, the largest sympathy — and
all that in perfect measure. There's enough there
to ruin the prospects of any writer. For you know
very well, my dear Edward, that if you had An-
tinous himself in a booth of the world's fair, and
killed yourself in protesting that his soul was as
perfect as his body, you wouldn't get one per cent,
of the crowd struggling next door for a sight of
the Double-headed Nightingale or of some weak-
kneed giant grinning through a horse collar.

J. c.

STEPHEN CRANE

A Note Without Dates
1919

My acquaintance with Stephen Crane was brought
about by Mr. PawHng, partner in the publishing
firm of Mr. William Heinemann.

One day Mr. Pawling said to me : " Stephen
Crane has arrived in England. I asked him if
there was anybody he wanted to meet and he
mentioned two names. One of them was yours."
I had then just been reading, Hke the rest of the
world, Crane's Red Badge of Courage. The subject
of that story was war, from the point of view of
an individual soldier's emotions. That individual
(he remains nameless throughout) was interesting
enough in himself, but on turning over the pages
of that Httle book which had for the moment
secured such a noisy recognition I had been even
more interested in the personality of the writer.
The picture of a simple and untried youth becom-
ing through the needs of his country part of a
great fighting machine was presented with an
earnestness of purpose, a sense of tragic issues,
and an imaginative force of expression which

67

68 STEPHEN CRANE

struck me as quite uncommon and altogether
worthy of admiration.

Apparently Stephen Crane had received a
favourable impression from the reading of the
Nigger of the Narcissus^ a book of mine which
had also been published lately. I was truly
pleased to hear this.

On my next visit to town we met at a lunch. I
saw a young man of medium stature and slender
build, with very steady, penetrating blue eyes, the
eyes of a being who not only sees visions but can
brood over them to some purpose.

He had indeed a wonderful power of vision,
which he appHed to the things of this earth and
of our mortal humanity with a penetrating force
that seemed to reach, within Hfe's appearances and
forms, the very spirit of life's truth. His ignorance
of the world at large — ^he had seen very little of
it — did not stand in the way of his imaginative
grasp of facts, events, and picturesque men.

His manner was very quiet, his personaHty at
first sight interesting, and he talked slowly with
an intonation which on some people, mainly
Americans, had, I beHeve, a jarring effect. But
not on me. Whatever he said had a personal
note, and he expressed himself with a graphic
simpHcity which was extremely engaging. He
knew little of literature, either of his own country
or of any other, but he was himself a wonderful

STEPHEN CRANE 69

artist in words whenever he took a pen into his
hand. Then his gift came out — and it was seen then
to be much more than mere felicity of language.
His impressionism of phrase went really deeper
than the surface. In his writing he was very sure
of his effects. I don't think he was ever in doubt
about what he could do. Yet it often seemed to
me that he was but half aware of the exceptional
quality of his achievement.

This achievement was curtailed by his early
death. It was a great loss to his friends, but
perhaps not so much to Hterature. I think that
he had given his measure fully in the few books
he had the time to write. Let me not be mis-
understood: the loss was great, but it was the
loss of the delight his art could give, not the loss
of any further possible revelation. As to himself,
who can say how much he gained or lost by quit-
ting so early this world of the living, which he
knew how to set before us in the terms of his own
artistic vision ? Perhaps he did not lose a great
deal. The recognition he was accorded was rather
languid and given him grudgingly. The worthiest
welcome he secured for his tales in this country
was from Mr. W. Henley in the ISIew Reviezu and*
later, towards the end of his life, from the late Mr.
William Blackwood in his magazine. For the rest
I must say that during his sojourn in England he
had the misfortune to be, as the French say, mal

/

70 STEPHEN CRANE

entoure. He was beset by people who understood
not the quahty of his genius and were antagonistic
to the deeper fineness of his nature. Some of them
have died since, but dead or aHve they are not
worth speaking about now. I don't think he had
any illusions about them himself: yet there was
a strain of good-nature and perhaps of weakness
in his character which prevented him from shaking
himself free from their worthless and patronising
attentions, which in those days caused me much
secret irritation whenever I stayed with him in
either of his English homes. My wife and I like
best to remember him riding to meet us at the
gate of the Park at Brede. Born master of his
sincere impressions, he was also a born horseman.
He never appeared so happy or so much to ad-
vantage as on the back of a horse. He had formed
the project of teaching my eldest boy to ride, and
meantime, when the child was about two years
old, presented him with his first dog.

I saw Stephen Crane a few days after his arrival
in London. I saw him for the last time on his last
day in England. It was in Dover, in a big hotel, in
a bedroom with a large window looking on to the
sea. He had been very ill and Mrs. Crane was
taking him to some place in Germany, but one
glance at that wasted face was enough to tell me
that it was the most forlorn of all hopes. The last
words he breathed out to me were: " I am tired.

STEPHEN CRANE 71

Give my love to your wife and child." When I
stopped at the door for another look I saw that he
had turned his head on the pillow and was staring
wistfully out of the window at the sails of a cutter
yacht that glided slowly across the frame, hke a
dim shadow against the grey sky.

Those who have read his little tale, " Horses,"
and the story, "The Open Boat," in the volume
of that name, know with what fine understanding
he loved horses and the sea. And his passage
on this earth was like that of a horseman riding
swiftly in the dawn of a day fated to be short
and without sunshine.

TALES OF THE SEA

1898

It is by his irresistible power to reach the ad-
venturous side in the character, not only of his
own, but of all nations, that Marryat is largely
human. He is the enslaver of youth, not by
the Hterary artifices of presentation, but by the
natural glamour of his own temperament. To his
young heroes the beginning of life is a splendid
and warhke lark, ending at last in inheritance and
marriage. His novels are not the outcome of his
art, but of his character, like the deeds that make
up his record of naval service. To the artist his
work is interesting as a completely successful ex-
pression of an unartistic nature. It is absolutely
amazing to us, as the disclosure of the spirit
animating the stirring time when the nineteenth
century was young. There is an air of fable about
it. Its loss would be irreparable, Hke the curtail-
ment of national story or the loss of an historical
document. It is the beginning and the embodiment
of an inspiring tradition.

To this writer of the sea the sea was not an
element. It was a stage, where was displayed an

73

74 TALES OF THE SEA

exhibition of valour, and of such achievement as
the world had never seen before. The greatness of
that achievement cannot be pronounced im^agi-
nary, since its reality has affected the destinies of
nations; nevertheless, in its grandeur it has all
the remoteness of an ideal. History preserves the
skeleton of facts and, here and there, a figure or
a name; but it is in Marryat's novels that we
find the mass of the nameless, that we see them
in the flesh, that we obtain a glimpse of the every-
day life and an insight into the spirit animating
the crowd of obscure men who knew how to
build for their country such a shining monument
of memories.

Marryat is really a writer of the Service. What
sets him apart is his fideHty. His pen serves his
country as well as did his professional skill and
his renowned courage. His figures move about
between water and sky, and the water and the
sky are there only to frame the deeds of the Ser-
vice. His novels, Hke amphibious creatures, live
on the sea and frequent the shore, where they
flounder deplorably. The loves and the hates of
his boys are as primitive as their virtues and their
vices. His women, from the beautiful Agnes to
the witch-like mother of Lieutenant Vanslyperken,
are, with the exception of the sailors' wives, like
the shadows of what has never been. His Silvas,
his Ribieras, his Shriftens, his Delmars remind us

TALES OF THE SEA 75

of people we have heard of somewhere, many
times, without ever beheving in their existence.
His morahty is honourable and conventional.
There is cruelty in his fun and he can invent
puns in the midst of carnage. His naiveties are
perpetrated in a lurid light. There is an endless
variety of types, all surface, with hard edges,
with memorable eccentricities of outHne, with a
childish and heroic effect in the drawing. They
do not belong to hfe; they belong exclusively to
the Service. And yet they hve; there is a truth
in them., the truth of their time; a headlong,
reckless audacity, an intimacy with violence, an
unthinking fearlessness, and an exuberance of
vitahty which only years of war and victories
can give. His adventures are enthralling; the
rapidity of his action fascinates; his method is
crude, his sentimentahty, obviously incidental, is
often factitious. His greatness is undeniable.

It is undeniable. To a multitude of readers the
navy of to-day is Marryat's navy still. He has
created a priceless legend. If he be not immortal,
yet he will last long enough for the highest ambi-
tion, because he has dealt manfully with an in-
spiring phase in the history of that Service on
which the Hfe of his country depends. The tradi-
tion of the great past he has fixed in his pages
will be cherished for ever as the guarantee of the
future. He loved his country first, the Service

t6 tales of the sea

next, the sea perhaps not at all. But the sea
loved him without reserve. It gave him his pro-
fessional distinction and his author's fame — a
fame such as not often falls to the lot of a true
artist.

At the same time, on the other side of the
Atlantic, another man wrote of the sea with true
artistic instinct. He is not invincibly young and
heroic; he is mature and human, though for him
also the stress of adventure and endeavour must
end fatally in inheritance and marriage. For
James Fenimore Cooper nature was not the frame-
work, it was an essential part of existence. He
could hear its voice, he could understand its silence,
and he could interpret both for us in his prose with
all that fehcity and sureness of effect that belong
to a poetical conception alone. His fame, as wide
but less brilliant than that of his contemporary,
rests mostly on a novel which is not of the sea.
But he loved the sea and looked at it with con-
summate understanding. In his sea tales the sea
inter-penetrates with life; it is in a subtle way a
factor in the problem of existence, and, for all its
greatness, it is always in touch with the men, who,
bound on errands of war or gain, traverse its
immense solitudes. His descriptions have the
magistral ampleness of a gesture indicating the
sweep of a vast horizon. They embrace the colours
of sunset, the peace of starlight, the aspects of

TALES OF THE SEA ^^

calm and storm, the great loneliness of the waters,
the stillness of watchful coasts, and the alert readi-
ness which marks men who live face to face with
the promise and the menace of the sea.

He knows the men and he knows the sea. His
method may be often faulty, but his art is genuine.
The truth is within him. The road to legitimate
realism is through poetical feeling, and he pos-
sesses that — only it is expressed in the leisurely
manner of his time. He has the knowledge of
simple hearts. Long Tom Coffin is a monumental
seaman with the individuality of life and the
significance of a type. It is hard to beheve that
Manual and Borroughchffe, Mr. Marble of Marble-
Head, Captain Tuck of the packet-ship Montauk^
or Daggett, the tenacious commander of the Sea
Lion of Martha's Vineyard, must pass away some
day and be utterly forgotten. His sympathy is
large, and his humour is as genuine — and as per-
fectly unaffected — as is his art. In certain passages
he reaches, very simply, the heights of inspired
vision.

He wrote before the great American language
was born, and he wrote as well as any novehst of
his time. If he pitches upon episodes redounding
to the glory of the young repubhc, surely England
has glory enough to forgive him, for the sake of his
excellence, the patriotic bias at her expense. The
interest of his tales is convincing and unflagging;

78 TALES OF THE SEA

and there runs through his work a steady vein of
friendliness for the old country which the succeeding
generations of his compatriots have replaced by
a less definite sentiment.

Perhaps no two authors of fiction influenced
so many hves and gave to so many the initial
impulse towards a glorious or a useful career.
Through the distances of space and time those
two men of another race have shaped also the
life of the writer of this appreciation. Life is life,
and art is art — and truth is hard to find in either.
Yet in testimony to the achievement of both
these authors it may be said that, in the case of
the writer at least, the youthful glamour, the
headlong vitality of the one and the profound
sympathy, the artistic insight of the other — to
which he had surrendered — have withstood the
brutal shock of facts and the wear of laborious
years. He has never regretted his surrender.

AN OBSERVER IN MALAYA'
1898

In his new volume, Mr. Hugh CJifford, at the
beginning of the sketch entitled " At the Heels of
the White Man," expresses his anxiety as to the
state of England's account in the Day-Book of the
Recording Angel " for the good and the bad we have
done — both with the most excellent intentions."
The intentions will, no doubt, count for some-
thing, though, of course, every nation's conquests
are paved with good intentions; or it may be that
the Recording Angel, looking compassionately at
the strife of hearts, may disdain to enter into the
Eternal Book the facts of a struggle which has the
reward of its righteousness even on this earth —
in victory and lasting greatness, or in defeat and
humiHation.

And, also, love will count for much. If the
opinion of a looker-on from afar is worth anything,
Mr. Hugh Clifford's anxiety about his country's
record is needless. To the Malays whom he
governs, instructs, and guides he is the embodi-
ment of the intentions, of the conscience and

* Studies in Brown Humanity. By Hugh Clifford,
79

8o AN OBSERVER IN MALAYA

might of his race. And of all the nations con-
quering distant territories in the name of the most
excellent intentions, England alone sends out men
who, with such a transparent sincerity of feeling, can
speak, as Mr. Hugh CHfford does, of the place of toil
and exile as " the land which is very dear to me,
where the best years of my Hfe have been spent "
— and where (I would stake my right hand on it)
his name is pronounced with respect and affection
by those brown men about whom he writes.

All these studies are on a high level of interest,
though not all on the same level. The descriptive
chapters, results of personal observation, seem to
me the most interesting. And, indeed, in a book
of this kind it is the author's personality which
awakens the greatest interest; it shapes itself be-
fore one in the ring of sentences, it is seen between
the Hnes — like the progress of a traveller in the
jungle that may be traced by the sound of the
parang chopping the swaying creepers, while the
man himself is gHmpsed, now and then, indistinct
and passing between the trees. Thus in his very
vagueness of appearance, the writer seen through
the leaves of his book becomes a fascinating com-
panion in a land of fascination.

It is when dealing with the aspects of nature that
Mr. Hugh CHfford is most convincing. He looks
upon them lovingly, for the land is '* very dear
to him," and he records his cherished impressions

AN OBSERVER IN MALAYA 8i

so that the forest, the great flood, the jungle, the
rapid river, and the menacing rock dwell in the
memory of the reader long after the book is closed.
He does not say anything, in so many words, of
his affection for those who live amid the scenes he
describes so well, but his humanity is large enough
to pardon us if we suspect him of such a rare
weakness. In his preface he expresses the regret
at not having the gifts (whatever they may be) of
the kailyard school, or — ^looking up to a very
different plane — the genius of Mr. Barrie. He has,
however, gifts of his own, and his genius has
served his country and his fortunes in another
direction. Yet it is when attempting what he
professes himself unable to do, in telling us the
simple story of tJmat, the punkah-puller, with un-
affected simplicity and half-concealed tenderness,
that he comes nearest to artistic achievement.

Each study in this Volume presents some idea,
illustrated by a fact told without artifice, but with
an effective sureness of knowledge. The story
of Tukang Burok's love, related in the old man's
own words, conveys the very breath of Malay
thought and speech. In "His Little Bill," the
coohe, Lim Teng Wah, facing his debtor, stands
very distinct before us, an insignificant and tragic
victim of fate with whom he had quarrelled to the
death over a matter of seven dollars and sixty-
eight cents. The story of " The Schooner with a

82 AN OBwSERVER IN MALAYA

Past "may be heard, from the Straits eastward, with
many variations. Out in the Pacific the schooner
becomes a cutter, and the pearl-divers are re-
placed by the Black-birds of the Labour Trade.
But Mr. Hugh CHfford's variation is very good.
There is a passage in it — a trifle— just the diver as
seen coming up from the depths, that in its dozen
lines or so attains to distinct artistic value. And,
scattered through the book, there are many other
passages of almost equal descriptive excellence.

Nevertheless, to apply artistic standards to this
book would be a fundamental error in apprecia-
tion. Like faith, enthusiasm, or heroism, art veils »
part of the truth of life to make the rest appear
m^ore splendid, inspiring, or sinister. And this_
book is only truth, interesting and futile, truth,
unadorned, simple and straightforward. The Resi-
dent of Pahang has the devoted friendship of
Umat, the punkah-puller, he has an individual
faculty of vision, a large sympathy, and the
scrupulous consciousness of the good and evil in
his hands. He may as well rest content with
such gifts. One cannot expect to be, at the same
time, a ruler of mxcn and an irreproachable player
on the flute.

A HAPPY WANDERER

1910

Converts are interesting people. Most of us, if
you will pardon me for betraying the universal
secret, have, at some tim.e or other, discovered
in ourselves a readiness to stray far, ever so far,
on the wrong road. And what did we do in our
pride and our cowardice ? Casting fearful glances
and waiting for a dark moment, we buried our
discovery discreetly, and kept on in the old direc-
tion, on that old, beaten track we have not had
courage enough to leave, and which we perceive
now more clearly than before to be but the arid
way of the grave.

The convert, the man capable of grace (I am
speaking here in a secular sense), is not discreet.
His pride is of another kind; he jumps gladly off
the track — the touch of grace is mostly sudden —
and facing about in a new direction may even
attain the illusion of having turned his back on
Death itself.

Some converts have, indeed, earned immort-
aUty by their exquisite indiscretion. The most
illustrious example of a convert, that Flower of

83

84 A HAPPY WANDERER

chivalry, Don Quixote de la Mancha, remains for
all the world the only genuine immortal hidalgo.
The delectable Knight of Spain became converted,
as you know, from the ways of a small country
squire to an imperative faith in a tender and
subHme mission. Forthwith he was beaten with
sticks and in due course shut up in a wooden
cage by the Barber and the Priest, the fit ministers
of a justly shocked social order. I do not know if
it has occurred to anybody yet to shut up Mr.
Luffmann in a wooden cage.^ I do not raise the
point because I wish him any harm. Quite the
contrary. I am a humane person. Let him take
it as the highest praise — but I must say that he
richly deserves that sort of attention.

On the other hand I would not have him unduly
puffed up with the pride of the exalted association.
The grave wisdom, the admirable amenity, the
serene grace of the secular patron-saint of all mortals
converted to noble visions are not his. Mr. Luff-
mann has no mission. He is no Knight subHmely
Errant. But he is an excellent Vagabond. He is full
of merit. That peripatetic guide, philosopher and
friend of all nations, Mr. Roosevelt, would promptly
excommunicate him with a big stick. The truth is
that the ex-autocrat of all the States does not like
rebels against the sullen order of our universe.
Make the best of it or perish — he cries. A sane
^ Quiet Days in Spain. By C. Bogue Luffmann.

A HAPPY WANDERER 85

lineal successor of the Barber and the Priest, and
a sagacious political heir of the incomparable
Sancho Panza (another great Governor), that dis-
tinguished litterateur has no mercy for dreamers.
And our author happens to be a man of (you may
trace them in his books) some rather fine reveries.

Every convert begins by being a rebel, and I
do not see myself how any mercy can possibly be
extended to Mr. Luffmann. He is a convert from
the creed of strenuous hfe. For this renegade the
body is of httle account; to him work appears
criminal when it suppresses the demands of the
inner life; while he was young he did grind vir-
tuously at the sacred handle, and now, he says, he
has fallen into disgrace with some people because
he believes no longer in toil without end. Certain
respectable folk hate him — so he says — because he
dares to think that " poetry, beauty, and the
broad face of the world are the best things to be
in love with." He confesses to loving Spain on the
ground that she is " the land of to-morrow, and
holds the gospel of never-mind." The universal
striving to push ahead he considers mere vulgar
folly. Didn't 1 tell you he was a fit subject for
the cage ?

It is a rehef (we are all humane, are we not ?) to
discover that this desperate character is not alto-
gether an outcast. Little girls seem to like him.
One of them, after Hstening to some of his tales,

86 A HAPPY WANDERER

remarked to her mother, '' Wouldn't it be lovely
if what he says were true! " Here you have
Woman! The charming creatures will neither
strain at a camel nor swallow a gnat. Not publicly.
These operations^ without which the world they
have such a large share in could not go on Jor ten
minutes, are left to us — men. And then we are
chided for being coarse. This is a refined objection
but does not seem fair. Another little girl — or
perhaps the same little girl — wrote to him in Cor-
dova, " I hope Poste-Restante is a nice place, and
that you are very comfortable." Woman again!
I have in my time told some stories which are (I
hate false modesty) both true and lovely. Yet no
Httle girl ever wrote to me in kindly terms. And
why ? Simply because I am not enough of a Vaga-
bond. The dear despots of the fireside have a
weakness for lawless characters. This is amiable,
but does not seem rational.

Being Quixotic, Mr. Luffmann is no Impres-
sionist. He is far too earnest in his heart, and not
half sufficiently precise in his style to be that. But
he is an excellent narrator. More than any Vaga-
bond I have ever met, he knows what he is about.
There is not one of his quiet days which is dull.
You will find in them a love-story not made up,
the coup-de-foudre, the lightning-stroke of Spanish
love; and you will marvel how a spell so sudden
and vehement can be at the same time so tragically

A HAPPY WANDERER 87

delicate. You will find there landladies devoured
with jealousy, astute housekeepers, delightful boys,
wise peasants, touchy shopkeepers, all the cosas
de Espana — and, in addition, the pale girl Rosario.
I recommend that pathetic and silent victim of fate
to your benevolent compassion. You will find in
his pages the humours of starving workers of the
soil, the vision among the mountains of an exulting
mad spirit in a mighty body, and many other
visions worthy of attention. And they are exact
visions, for this idealist is no visionary. He is in
sympathy with suffering mankind, and has a grasp
on real human affairs. I mean the great and pitiful
affairs concerned with bread, love, and the obscure,
unexpressed needs which drive great crowds to
prayer in the holy places of the earth.

But I Hke his conception of what a " quiet "
life is hke! His quiet days require no fewer than
forty-two of the forty-nine provinces of Spain to
take their ease in. For his unquiet days, I presume,
the seven — or is it nine ? — crystal spheres of Alex-
andrian cosmogony would afford but a wretchedly
straitened space. A most unconventional thing
is his notion of quietness. One would take it as a
joke; only that, perchance, to the author of Quiet
Days in Spain all days may seem quiet, because,
a courageous convert, he is now at peace with
himself.

How better can we take leave of this interesting

88 A HAPPY WANDERER

Vagabond than with, the road salutation of passing
wayfarers : " And on you be peace ! . . . You have
chosen your ideal, and it is a good choice. There's
nothing Hke giving up one's Hfe to an unselfish
passion. Let the rich and the powerful of this
globe preach their sound gospel of palpable pro-
gress. The part of the ideal you embrace is the
better one, if only in its illusions. No great passion
can be barren. May a world of gracious and
poignant images attend the lofty solitude of your
renunciation! "

THE LIFE BEYOND

1910

You have no doubt noticed that certain books
produce a sort of physical effect on one — mostly
an audible effect. I am not alluding here to Blue
books or to books of statistics. The effect of these
is simply exasperating and no more. No! the
books I have in mind are just the common books
of commerce you and I read when we have five
minutes to spare, the usual hired books pubHshed
by ordinary pubHshers, printed by ordinary
printers, and censored (when they happen to be
novels) by the usual circulating Hbraries, the
guardians of our firesides, whose names are house-
hold words within the four seas.

To see the fair and the brave of this free country
surrendering themselves with unbounded trust to
the direction of the circulating libraries is very
touching. It is even, in a sense, a beautiful spec-
tacle, because, as you know, humihty is a rare and
fragrant virtue; and what can be more humble
than to surrender your morals and your intellect
to the judgment of one of your tradesmen ? I
suppose that there are some very perfect people

89

90 THE LIFE BEYOND

who allow the Army and Navy Stores to censor
their diet. So much merit, however, I imagine, is
not frequently met with here below. The flesh,
alas! is weak, and — from a certain point of view
— so important!

A superficial person might be rendered miserable
by the simple question : What would become of us
if the circulating libraries ceased to exist ? It is a
horrid and almost indehcate supposition, but let
us be brave and face the truth. On this earth of
ours nothing lasts, ^out fasse, tout casse, tout
lasse. Imagine the utter wreck overtaking the
morals of our beautiful country-houses should the
circulating hbraries suddenly die ! But pray do not
shudder. There is no occasion.

Their spirit shall survive. I declare this from
inward conviction, and also from scientific in-
formation received lately. For observe: the cir-
culating libraries are human institutions. I beg
you to follow me closely. They are human insti-
tutions, and being human, they are not animal,
and, therefore, they are spiritual. Thus, any man
with enough money to take a shop, stock his
shelves, and pay for advertisements shall be able
to evoke the pure and censorious spectre of the
circulating libraries whenever his own commercial
spirit moves him.

For, and this is the information alluded to above.
Science, having in its infinite wanderings run up

THE LIFE BEYOND 91

against various wonders and mysteries, is ap-
parently willing now to allow a spiritual quality
to man and, I conclude, to all his works as well.

I do not know exactly what this " Science " may
be; and I do not think that anybody else knows;
but that is the information stated shortly. It is
contained in a book reposing under my thoughtful
eyes.^ I know it is not a censored book, because
I can see for myself that it is not a novel. The
author, on his side, warns me that it is not philo-
sophy, that it is not metaphysics, that it is not
natural science. After this comprehensive warn-
ing, the definition of the book becomes, you will
admit, a pretty hard nut to crack.

But meantime let us return for a moment to my
opening remark about the physical effect of some
common, hired books. A few of them (not neces-
sarily books of verse) are melodious; the music
some others make for you as you read has the dis-
agreeable emphasis of a barrel-organ; the tinkHng-
cymbals book (it was not written by a humorist)
I only met once. But there is infinite variety in
the noises books do make. I have now on my
shelves a book apparently of the most valuable
kind which, before I have read half-a-dozen lines,
begins to make a noise Hke a buzz-saw. I am in-
consolable; I shall never, I fear, discover what it

^ Existence after Death Implied by Science. By Jasper B,
Hunt. M.A.

92 THE LIFE BEYOND

is all about, for the buzzing covers the words,
and at every try I am absolutely forced to give it
up ere the end of the page is reached.

The book, however, which I have found so diffi-
cult to define, is by no means noisy. As a mere
piece of writing it may be described as being
breathless itself and taking the reader's breath
away, not by the magnitude of its message but
by a sort of anxious volubihty in the delivery. The
constantly elusive argument and the illustrative
quotations go on without a single reflective pause.
For this reason alone the reading of that work is
a fatiguing process.

The author himself (I use his own words) " sus-
pects " that what he has written " may be theology
after all." It may be. It is not my place either
to allay or to confirm the author's suspicion of
his own work. But I will state its main thesis :
" That science regarded in the gross dictates the
spirituality of man and strongly impHes a
spiritual destiny for individual human beings."
This means : Existence after Death — that is,
ImmortaHty.

To find out its value you must go to the book.
But I will observe here that an ImmortaHty Hable
at any moment to betray itself fatuously by the
forcible incantations of Mr. Stead or Professor
Crookes is scarcely worth having. Can you imagine
anything more squaHd than an ImmortaHty at the

THE LIFE BEYOND 93

beck and call of Eusapia Palladino ? That woman
lives on the top floor of a NeapoHtan house, and
gets our poor, pitiful, august dead, flesh of our
flesh, bone of our bone, spirit of our spirit, who
have loved, suffered and died, as we must love,
suffer, and die — she gets them to beat tambourines
in a corner and protrude shadowy limbs through a
curtain. This is particularly horrible, because, if
one had to put one's faith in these things one could
not even die safely from disgust, as one would long
to do.

And to beHeve that these manifestations, which
the author evidently takes for modern miracles,
will stay our tottering faith; to believe that the
new psychology has, only the other day, dis-
covered man to be a *' spiritual mystery," is
really carrying humihty towards that universal
provider. Science, too far.

We moderns have complicated our old perplex-\ .
ities to the point of absurdity; our perplexities \
older than religion itself. It is not for nothing that I
for so many centuries the priest, mounting the I
steps of the altar, murmurs, " Why art thou sad, '
my soul, and why dost thou trouble me ? " Since ^ ^""i
the day of Creation two veiled figures. Doubt and
Melancholy, are pacing endlessly in the sunshine of
the world. What humanity needs is not the pro-
mise of scientific immortality, but compassionate

94

THE LIFE BEYOND

[ pity in this life and infinite mercy on the Day of

/ Judgment.

^ And, for the rest, during this transient hour of
our pilgrimage, we may well be content to repeat
the Invocation of Sar Peladan. Sar Peladan was
an occultist, a seer, a modern magician. He be-
lieved in astrology, in the spirits of the air, in
elves ; he was marvellously and deliciously absurd.
Incidentally he wrote some incomprehensible poems
and a few pages of harmonious prose, for, you must
know, " a magician is nothing else but a great har-
monist." Here are some eight lines of the magnifi-
cent Invocation. Let me, however, warn you,
strictly between ourselves, that my translation is
execrable. I am sorry to say I am no magician.

" O Nature, indulgent Mother, forgive ! Open
" your arms to the son, prodigal and weary.

" I have attempted to tear asunder the veil you
" have hung to conceal from us the pain of life,
" and I have been wounded by the mystery. . . .
" CEdipus, half way to finding the word of the
" enigma, young Faust, regretting already the
" simple life, the life of the heart, I come back to
" you repentant, reconciled, 0 gentle deceiver ! "

THE ASCENDING EFFORT

1910

Much good paper has been lamentably wasted to
prove that science has destroyed, that it is destroy-
ing, or, some day, may destroy poetry. Meantime,
unblushing, unseen, and often unheard, the guile-
less poets have gone on singing in a sweet strain.
How they dare do the . impossible and virtually
forbidden thing is a cause for wonder but not for
legislation. Not yet. We are at present too busy
reforming the silent burglar and planning concerts
to soothe the savage breast of the yeUing hoohgan.
As somebody — perhaps a pubHsher — said lately:
" Poetry is of no account now-a-days."

But it is not totally neglected. Those persons
with gold-rimmed spectacles whose usual occupa-
tion is to spy upon the obvious have remarked
audibly (on several occasions) that poetry has so
far not given to science any acknowledgment
worthy of its distinguished position in the popular
mind. Except that Tennyson looked down the
throat of a foxglove, that Erasmus Darwin wrote
^he Loves of the Plants and a scoffer The Loves
of the Triangles^ poets have been supposed to be

95

96 THE ASCENDING EFFORT

indecorously blind to the progress of science. What
tribute, for instance, has poetry paid to electricity ?
All I can remember on the spur of the moment is
Mr. Arthur Symons' hne about arc lamps : " Hung
with the globes of some unnatural fruit."

Commerce and Manufacture praise on every
hand in their not mute but inarticulate way the
glories of science. Poetry does not play its part.
Behold John Keats, skilful with the surgeon's
knife; but when he writes poetry his inspiration
is not from the operating table. Here I am re-
minded, though, of a modern instance to the con-
trary in prose. Mr. H. G. Wells, who, as far as I
know, has never written a line of verse, was in-
spired a few years ago to write a short story,
Under the Knife, Out of a clock-dial, a brass rod,
and a whiff of chloroform, he has conjured for us a
sensation of space and eternity, evoked the face of
the Unknowable, and an awesome, august voice,
like the voice of the Judgment Day; a great voice,
perhaps the voice of science itself, uttering the
words: " There shall be no more pain! " I advise
you to look up that story, so human and so in-
timate, because Mr. Wells, the writer of prose
whose amazing inventiveness we all know, remains
a poet even in his most perverse moments of scorn
for things as they are. His poetic imagination is
sometimes even greater than his inventiveness, I
am not afraid to say. But, indeed, imaginative

THE ASCENDING EFFORT 97

faculty would make any man a poet — were he born
without tongue for speech and without hands to
seize his fancy and fasten her down to a wretched
piece of paper.

The book ^ which in the course of the last few
days I have opened and shut several times is not
imaginative. But, on the other hand, it is not a
dumb book, as some are. It has even a sort of
sober and serious eloquence, reminding us that not
poetry alone is at fault in this matter. Mr. Bourne
begins his Ascending Effort with a remark by Sir
Francis Galton upon Eugenics that '4f the principles
he was advocating were to become effective they
must be introduced into the national conscience,
Hke a new reHgion." " Introduced " suggests com-
pulsory vaccination. Mr. Bourne, who is not a
theologian, wishes to league together not science
and rehgion, but science and the arts. " The in-
toxicating power of art," he thinks, is the very
thing needed to give the desired effect to the doc-
trines of science. In uninspired phrase he points
to the arts playing once upon a time a part in
" popularising the Christian tenets." With pains-
taking fervour as great as the fervour of prophets,
but not so persuasive, he foresees the arts some
day popularising science. Until that day dawns,
science will continue to be lame and poetry blind.
1 The Ascending Effort. By George Bourne.

98 THE ASCENDING EFFORT

He himself cannot smooth or even point out the
way, though he thinks that " a really prudent
people would be greedy of beauty," and their
pubHc authorities " as careful of the sense of com-
fort as of sanitation."

As the writer of those remarkable rustic note-
books, ^he Betteszvorth Book and Memoirs of a
Surrey Labourer^ the author has a claim upon our
attention. But his seriousness, his patience, his
almost touching sincerity, can only command the
respect of his readers and nothing more. He is
obsessed by science, haunted and shadowed by
it, until he has been bewildered into awe. He
knows, indeed, that art owes its triumphs and its
subtle influence to the fact that it issues straight
from our organic vitaHty, and is a movement of
life-cells with their matchless unintellectual know-
ledge. But the fact that poetry does not seem
obviously in love with science has never made
him doubt whether it may not be an argument
against his haste to see the marriage ceremony
performed amid pubhc rejoicings.

Many a man has heard or read and believes that
the earth goes round the sun; one small blob of
mud among several others, spinning ridiculously
with a waggHng motion Hke a top about to fall.
This is the Copernican system, and the man be-
Heves in the system without often knowing as
much about it as its name. But while watching a

THE ASCENDING EFFORT 99

sunset he sheds his belief; he sees the sun as a
small and useful object, the servant of his needs
and the witness of his ascending effort, sinking
slowly behind a range of mountains, and then he
holds the system of Ptolemy. He holds it without
knowing it. In the same way a poet hears, reads,
and believes a thousand undeniable truths which
have not yet got into his blood, nor will do after
reading Mr. Bourne's book; he writes, therefore, as
if neither truths nor book existed. Life and the arts
follow dark courses, and will not turn aside to
the brilliant arc-Hghts of science. Some day, with-
out a doubt, — and it may be a consolation to
Mr. Bourne to know it — fully informed critics will
point out that Mr. Davies's poem on a dark woman
combing her hair must have been written after the
invasion of appendicitis, and that Mr. Yeats's
*' Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths " came
before radium was quite unnecessarily dragged
out of its respectable obscurity in pitchblende to
upset the venerable (and comparatively naive)
chemistry of our young days.

There are times when the tyranny of science and
the cant of science are alarming, but there are
other times when they are entertaining — and this
is one of them. " Many a man prides himself "
says Mr. Bourne, " on his piety or his views of
art, whose whole range of ideas, could they be
investigated, would be found ordinary, if not base,

100 THE ASCENDING EFFORT

because they have been adopted in compliance
with some external persuasion or to serve some
timid purpose instead of proceeding authorita-
tively from the living selection of his hereditary
taste." This extract is a fair sample of the book's
thought and of its style. But Mr. Bourne seems
to forget that " persuasion " is a vain thing. The
appreciation of great art comes from within.

It is but the merest justice to say that the trans-
parent honesty of Mr. Bourne's purpose is undeni-
able. But the whole book is simply an earnest
expression of a pious wish; and, like the generality
of pious wishes, this one seems of little dynamic
value — besides being impracticable.

Yes, indeed. Art has served Religion; artists
have found the most exalted inspiration in Chris-
tianity; but the Hght of Transfiguration which has
illuminated the profoundest mysteries of our sinful
souls is not the light of the generating stations,
which exposes the depths of our infatuation where
our mere cleverness is permitted for a while to grope
for the unessential among invincible shadows.

THE CENSOR OF PLAYS

An Appreciation
1907

A COUPLE of years ago I was moved to write a
one-act play — and I lived long enough to accom-
plish the task. We live and learn. When the play
was finished I was informed that it had to be
licensed for performance. Thus I learned of the
existence of the Censor of Plays. I may say with-
out vanity that I am intelligent enough to have
been astonished by that piece of information: for
facts must stand in some relation to time and
space, and I was aware of being in England — in
the twentieth-century England. The fact did not
fit the date and the place. That was my first
thought. It was, in short, an improper fact. I beg
you to beHeve that I am writing in all seriousness
and am weighing my words scrupulously.

Therefore I don't say inappropriate. I say
improper — that is; something to be ashamed of.
And at first this impression was confirmed by the
obscurity in which the figure embodying this after
all considerable fact had its being. The Censor

lOI

102 THE CENSOR OF PLAYS

of Plays! His name was not in the mouths of all
men. Far from it. He seemed stealthy and remote.
There was about that figure the scent of the far
East, like the peculiar atmosphere of a Mandarin's
back yard, and the mustiness of the Middle Ages,
that epoch when mankind tried to stand still in a
monstrous illusion of final certitude attained in
morals, intellect and conscience.

It was a disagreeable impression. But I re-
flected that probably the censorship of plays was
an inactive monstrosity; not exactly a survival,
since it seemed obviously at variance with the
genius of the people, but an heirloom of past ages,
a bizarre and imported curiosity preserved because
of that weakness one has for one's old possessions
apart from any intrinsic value; one more object
of exotic virtu, an Oriental potiche, a magot chinois
conceived by a childish and extravagant imagina-
tion, but allowed to stand in stolid impotence in
the twilight of the upper shelf.

Thus I quieted my uneasy mind. Its uneasiness
had nothing to do with the fate of my one-act
play. The play was duly produced, and an ex-
ceptionally intelhgent audience stared it coldly off
the boards. It ceased to exist. It was a fair and
open execution. But having survived the freezing
atmosphere of that auditorium I continued to
exist, labouring under no sense of wrong. I was
not pleased, but I was content. I was content

THE CENSOR OF PLAYS 103

to accept the verdict of a free and independent
public, judging after its conscience the work of
its free, independent and conscientious servant —
the artist.

Only thus can the dignity of artistic servitude
be preserved — not to speak of the bare existence
of the artist and the self-respect of the man. I
shall say nothing of the self-respect of the public.
To the self-respect of the public the present appeal
against the censorship is being made and I join
in it with all my heart.

For I have Hved long enough to learn that the
monstrous and outlandish figure, the magot chinois
whom I beheved to be but a memorial of our fore-
fathers' mental aberration, that grotesque pottche,
works! The absurd and hollow creature of clay
seems to be ahve with a sort of (surely) uncon-
scious life worthy of its traditions. It heaves its
stomach, it rolls its eyes, it brandishes a monstrous
arm: and with the censorship, like a Bravo of
old Venice with a more carnal weapon, stabs its
victim from behind in the twihght of its upper
shelf. Less picturesque than the Venetian in cloak
and mask, less estimable, too, in this, that the
assassin plied his moral trade at his own risk
deriving no countenance from the powers of the
Repubhc, it stands more malevolent, inasmuch
that the Bravo striking in the dusk killed but
the body, whereas the grotesque thing nodding its

104 THE CENSOR OF PLAYS

mandarin head may in its absurd unconsciousness
strike down at any time the spirit of an honest,
of an artistic, perhaps of a sublime creation.

This Chinese monstrosity, disguised in the
trousers of the Western Barbarian and provided
by the State with the immortal Mr. Stiggins's
plug hat and umbrella, is with us. It is an office.
An office of trust. And from time to time there
is found an official to fill it. He is a pubhc man.
The least prominent of public men, the most
unobtrusive, the most obscure if not the most
modest.

But however obscure, a public man may be
told the truth if only once in his life. His office
flourishes in the shade; not in the rustic shade
beloved of the violet but in the muddled twihght
of mind, where tyranny of every sort flourishes. Its
holder need not have either brain or heart, no sight,
no taste, no imagination, not even bowels of com-
passion. He needs not these things. He has power.
He can kill thought, and incidentally truth, and
incidentally beauty, providing they seek to five in a
dramatic form. He can do it, without seeing, with-
out understanding, without feehng anything; out of
mere stupid suspicion, as an irresponsible Roman
Caesar could kill a senator. He can do that and
there is no one to say him nay. He may call his
cook (Moliere used to do that) from below and
give her five acts to judge every morning as a

THE CENSOR OF PLAYS 105

matter of constant practice and still remain the
unquestioned destroyer of men's honest work. He
may have a glass too much. This accident has
happened to persons of unimpeachable morality —
to gentlemen. He may suffer from spells of imbe-
ciHty Hke Clodius. He may . . . what might he
not do! I tell you he is the Caesar of the dramatic
world. There has been since the Roman Princi-
pate nothing in the way of irresponsible power to
compare with the office of the Censor of Plays.

Looked at in this way it has some grandeur,
something colossal in the odious and the absurd.
This figure in whose power it is to suppress an
intellectual conception — to kill thought (a dream
for a mad brain, my masters!) — seems designed in
a spirit of bitter comedy to bring out the greatness
of a PhiHstine's conceit and his moral cowardice.

But this is England in the twentieth century,
and one wonders that there can be found a man
courageous enough to occupy the post. It is a
matter for meditation. Having given it a few
minutes I come to the conclusion in the serenity
of my heart and the peace of my conscience that
he must be either an extreme megalomaniac or
an utterly unconscious being.

He must be unconscious. It is one of the quali-
fications for his magistracy. Other quaHfications
are equally easy. He must have done nothing, ex-
pressed nothing, imagined nothing. He must be

io6 THE CENSOR OF PLAYS

obscure, insignificant and mediocre- — in thought,
act, speech and sympathy. He must know nothing
of art, of life — and of himself. For if he did he
would not dare to be what he is. Like that much
questioned and mysterious bird, the phcenix, he
sits amongst the cold ashes of his predecessor upon
the altar of morality, alone of his kind in the sight
of wondering generations.

And I will end with a quotation reproducing
not perhaps the exact words but the true spirit
of a lofty conscience.

*' Often when sitting down to write the notice
of a play, especially when I felt it antagonistic to
my canons of art, to my tastes or my convictions,
I hesitated in the fear lest my conscientious blame
might check the development of a great talent,
my sincere judgment condemn a worthy mind.
With the pen poised in my hand I hesitated,
whispering to myself ' What if I were perchance
doing my part in killing a masterpiece.' "

Such were the lofty scruples of M. Jules Lemaitre
— dramatist and dramatic critic, a great citizen and
a high magistrate in the Repubhc of Letters; a
Censor of Plays exercising his august office openly
in the Hght of day, with the authority of a Euro-
pean reputation. But then M. Jules Lemaitre is a
man possessed of wisdom, of great fame, of a fine
conscience — not an obscure hollow Chinese mon-
strosity ornamented with Mr. Stiggins's plug hat

THE CENSOR OF PLAYS 107

and cotton umbrella by its anxious grandmother
— the State.

Frankly, is it not time to knock the im-
proper object off its shelf ? It has stood too long
there. Hatched in Pekin (I should say) by some
Board of Respectable Rites, the little caravan
monster has come to us by way of Moscow — I
suppose. It is outlandish. It is not venerable.
It does not belong here. Is it not time to knock
it off its dark shelf with some implement ap-
propriate to its worth and status ? With an old
broom handle for instance.

PART II
LIFE

AUTOCRACY AND WAR

1905

From the firing of the first shot on the banks of
the Sha-ho, the fate of the great battle of the
Russo-Japanese war hung in the balance for more
than a fortnight. The famous three-day battles,
for which history has reserved the recognition of
special pages, sink into insignificance before the
struggles in Manchuria engaging half a million
men on fronts of sixty miles, struggles lasting for
weeks, flaming up fiercely and dying away from
sheer exhaustion, to flame up again in desperate
persistence, and end — as we have seen them end
more than once — -not from the victor obtaining
a crushing advantage, but through the mortal
weariness of the combatants.

We have seen these things, though we have seen
them only in the cold, silent, colourless print of
books and newspapers. In stigmatising the printed
word as cold, silent and colourless, I have no in-
tention of putting a shght upon the fidelity and
the talents of men who have provided us with
words to read about the battles in Manchuria. I
only wished to suggest that in the nature of things,
the war in the Far East has been made known

III

112 AUTOCRACY AND WAR

to us, so far, in a grey reflection of its terrible and
monotonous phases of pain, death, sickness; a
reflection seen in the perspective of thousands of
miles, in the dim atmosphere of official reticence,
through the veil of inadequate words. Inadequate,
I say, because what had to be reproduced is beyond
the common experience of war, and our imagina-
tion, luckily for our peace of mind, has remained
a slumbering faculty, notwithstanding the din of
humanitarian talk and the real progress of human-
itarian ideas. Direct vision of the fact, or the
stimulus of a great art, can alone make it turn
and open its eyes heavy with blessed sleep; and
even there, as against the testimony of the senses
and the stirring up of emotion, that saving callous-
ness which reconciles us to the conditions of our
existence, will assert itself under the guise of assent
to fatal necessity, or in the enthusiasm of a purely
aesthetic admiration of the rendering. In this age
of knowledge our sympathetic imagination, to
which alone we can look for the ultimate triumph
of concord and justice, remains strangely imper-
vious to information, however correctly and even
picturesquely conveyed. As to the vaunted elo- '
quence of a serried array of figures, it has all the
futihty of precision without force. It is the ex-
ploded superstition of enthusiastic statisticians. An
over-worked horse falling in front of our windows,
a man writhing under a cart-wheel in the street.

AUTOCRACY AND WAR 113

awaken more genuine emotion, more horror, pity,
and indignation than the stream of reports, ap-
palling in their monotony, of tens of thousands of
decaying bodies tainting the air of the Manchurian
plains, of other tens of thousands of maimed bodies
groaning in ditches, crawHng on the frozen ground,
fiUing the field hospitals ; of the hundreds of thou-
sands of survivors no less pathetic and even more
tragic in being left aHve by fate to the wretched
exhaustion of their pitiful toil.

An early Victorian, or perhaps a pre-Victorian,
sentimentaHst, looking out of an upstairs window,
I beHeve, at a street — perhaps Fleet Street itself —
full of people, is reported, by an admiring friend,
to have wept for joy at seeing so much life. These
arcadian tears, this facile emotion worthy of the
golden age, comes to us from the past, with solemn
approval, after the close of the Napoleonic wars
and before the series of sanguinary surprises held
in reserve by the nineteenth century for our hope-
ful grandfathers. We may well envy them their
optimism of which this anecdote of an amiable wit
and sentimentalist presents an extreme instance,
but still, a true instance, and worthy of regard in
the spontaneous testimony to that trust in the hfe
of the earth, triumphant at last in the feHcity of
her children. Moreover, the psychology of indivi-
duals, even in tHe most extreme instances', reflects
the general effect of the fears and hopes of its time.

114 AUTOCRACY AND WAR

Wept for joy! I should think that now, after
eighty years, the emotion would be of a sterner
sort. One could not imagine anybody shedding
tears of joy at the sight of much Hfe in a street,
unless, perhaps, he were an enthusiastic officer of
a general staff or a popular pohtician, with a
career yet to make. And hardly even that. In the
case of the first tears would be unprofessional,
and a stern repression of all signs of joy at the pro-
vision of so much food for powder more in accord
with the rules of prudence; the joy of the second
would be checked before it found issue in weeping
by anxious doubts as to the soundness of these
electors' views upon the question of the hour, and
the fear of missing the consensus of their votes.

No! It seems that such a tender joy would be
misplaced now as m.uch as ever during the last
hundred years, to go no further back. The end of
the eighteenth century was, too, a time of optim-
ism and of dismal mediocrity in which the French
Revolution exploded Hke a bomb-shell. In its lurid
blaze the insufficiency of Europe, the inferiority of
minds, of military and administrative systems,
stood exposed with pitiless vividness. And there
is but little courage in saying at this time of the
day that the glorified French Revolution itself,
except for its destructive force, was in essentials
a mediocre phenomenon. The parentage of that
great social and poHtical upheaval was intellectual.

AUTOCRACY AND WAR 115

the idea was elevated; but it is the bitter fate of
any idea to lose its royal form and power, to lose
its " virtue " the moment it descends from its
sohtary throne to work its will among the people.
It is a king whose destiny is never to know the
obedience of his subjects except at the cost of
degradation. The degradation of the ideas of free-
dom and justice at the root of the French Revolu-
tion is made manifest in the person of its heir; a
personaHty without law or faith, whom it has been
the fashion to represent as an eagle, but who was,
in truth, more Hke a sort of vulture preying upon
the body of a Europe which did, indeed, for some
dozen of years, very much resemble a corpse. The
subtle and manifold influence for evil of the
Napoleonic episode as a school of violence, as a
sower of national hatreds, as the direct provocator
of obscurantism and reaction, of political tyranny
and injustice, cannot well be exaggerated.

The nineteenth century began with wars which
were the issue of a corrupted revolution. It may
be said that the twentieth begins with a war which
is Hke the explosive ferment of a moral grave,
whence may yet emerge a new political organism to
take the place of a gigantic and dreaded phantom.
For a hundred years the ghost of Russian might,
overshadowing with its fantastic bulk the councils
of Central and Western Europe, sat upon the
gravestone of autocracy, cutting off from air, from

ii6 AUTOCRACY AND WAR

light, from all knowledge of themselves and of
the world, the buried milHons of Russian people.
Not the most determined cockney sentimentaHst
could have had the heart to weep for joy at the
thought of its teeming numbers! And yet they
were Hving, they are ahve yet, since, through the
mist of print, we have seen their blood freezing
crimson upon the snow of the squares and streets
of St. Petersburg; since their generations born in
the grave are yet ahve enough to fill the ditches
and cover the fields of Manchuria with their torn
Hmbs; to send up from the frozen ground of battle-
fields a chorus of groans calling for vengeance from
Heaven; to kill and retreat, or kill and advance,
without intermission or rest for twenty hours, for
fifty hours, for whole weeks of fatigue, hunger,
cold, and murder — till their ghastly labour, worthy
of a place amongst the punishments of Dante's
Inferno, passing through the stages of courage, of
fury, of hopelessness, sinks into the night of crazy
despair.

It seems that in both armies many men are
driven beyond the bounds of sanity by the stress
of moral and physical misery. Great numbers of
soldiers and regimental officers go mad as if by
way of protest against the pecuHar sanity of a
state of war: mostly among the Russians, of
course. The Japanese have in their favour the
tonic effect of success; and the innate gentleness

AUTOCRACY AND WAR 117

of their character stands them in good stead. But
the Japanese grand array has yet another advan-
tage in this nerve-destroying contest, which for
endless, arduous toil of killing surpasses all the
wars of history. It has a base for its operations;
a base of a nature beyond the concern of the many
books written upon the so-called art of war, which,
considered by itself, purely as an exercise of human
ingenuity, is at best only a thing of well-worn,
simple artifices. The Japanese army has for its
base a reasoned conviction; it has behind it the
profound belief in the right of a logical necessity
to be appeased at the cost of so much blood and
treasure. And in that belief, whether well or ill
founded, that army stands on the high ground of
conscious assent, shouldering deliberately the bur-
den of a long-tried faithfulness. The other people
(since each people is an army nowadays), torn out
from a miserable quietude resembling death itself,
hurled across space, amazed, without starting-point
of its own or knowledge of the aim, can feel nothing
but a horror-stricken consciousness of having mys-
teriously become the plaything of a black and
merciless fate.

The profound, the instructive nature of this war
is resumed by the memorable difference in the
spiritual state of the two armies; the one forlorn
and dazed on being driven out from an abyss of
mental darkness into the red light of a conflagra-

ii8 AUTOCRACY AND WAR

tion, the other with a full knowledge of its past
and its future, " finding itself " as it were at every
step of the trying war before the eyes of an as-
tonished world. The greatness of the lesson has
been dwarfed for most of us by an often half-
conscious prejudice of race-difference. The West
having managed to lodge its hasty foot on the neck
of the East, is prone to forget that it is from the
East that the wonders of patience and wisdom
have come to a world of men who set the value of
Hfe in the power to act rather than in the faculty
of meditation. It has been dwarfed by this, and
it has been obscured by a cloud of considerations
with whose shaping wisdom and meditation had
Httle or nothing to do; by the weary platitudes on
the mihtary situation which (apart from geograph-
ical conditions) is the same everlasting situation
that has prevailed since the times of Hannibal and
Scipio, and further back yet, since the beginning
of historical record — since pre-historic times, for
that matter; by the conventional expressions of
horror at the tale of maiming and killing; by the
rumours of peace with guesses more or less plaus-
ible as to its conditions. All this is made legitimate
by the consecrated custom of writers in such time
as this — the time of a great war. More legitimate
in view of the situation created in Europe are the
speculations as to the course of events after the
war. More legitimate, but hardly more wise than

AUTOCRACY AND WAR 119

the irresponsible talk of strategy that never
changes, and of terms of peace that do not matter.

And above it all — unaccountably persistent — the
decrepit, old, hundred years old, spectre of Russia's
might still faces Europe from across the teeming
graves of Russian people. This dreaded and strange
apparition, bristling with bayonets, armed with
chains, hung over with holy images; that some- /j^
thing not of this world, partaking of a ravenous -
ghoul, of a bhnd Djinn grown up from a cloud,
and of the Old Man of the Sea, still faces us with its
old stupidity, with its strange mystical arrogance,
stamping its shadowy feet upon the gravestone
of autocracy already cracked beyond repair by
the torpedoes of Togo and the guns of Oyama,
already heaving in the blood-soaked ground
with the first stirrings of a resurrection.

JJever before had the Western world the oppor-
tunity to look so deep into the black abyss which
separates a soulless autocracy posing as, and even
beheving itself to be, the arbiter of Europe, from
the benighted, starved souls of its people. This is
the real object-lesson of this war, its unforgettable
information. And this war's true mission, disen-
gaged from the economic origins of that contest,
from doors open or shut, from the fields of Korea
for Russian wheat or Japanese rice, from the
ownership of ice-free ports and the command of
the waters of the East — its true mission was to lay

120 AUTOCRACY AND WAR

a ghost. It has accomphshed it. Whether Kuro-
patkin was incapable or unlucky, whether or not
Russia issuing next year, or the year after next,
from behind a rampart of piled-up corpses will
win or lose a fresh campaign, are minor considera-
tions. The task of Japan is done, the mission
accomplished; the ghost of Russia's might is laid.
Only Europe, accustomed so long to the presence
of that portent, seems unable to comprehend that,
as in the fables of our childhood, the twelve strokes
of the hour have rung, the cock has crowed, the
apparition has vanished — never to haunt again this
world which has been used to gaze at it with vague
dread and many misgivings.

It was a fascination. And the hallucination still
lasts as inexplicable in its persistence as in its dura-
tion. It seems so unaccountable, that the doubt
arises as to the sincerity of all that talk as to what
Russia will or will not do, whether it will raise
or not another army, whether it will bury the
Japanese in Manchuria under seventy milhons of
sacrificed peasants' caps (as her Press boasted a
little more than a year ago) or give up to Japan
that jewel of her crown, Saghalien, together with
some other things ; whether, perchance, as an inter-
esting alternative, it will make peace on the Amur
in order to make war beyond the Oxus.

All these speculations (with many others) have
appeared gravely in print; and if they have been

AUTOCRACY AND WAR 121

gravely considered by only one reader out of each
hundred, there must be something subtly noxious
to the human brain in the composition of news-
paper ink; or else it is that the large page, the
columns of words, the leaded headings, exalt the
mind into a state of feverish credulity. The printed
page of the Press makes a sort of still uproar,
taking from men both the power to reflect and
the faculty of genuine feeling; leaving them only
the artificially created need of having something
exciting to talk about.

The truth is that the Russia of our fathers, of
our childhood, of our middle-age; the testamen-
tary Russia of Peter the Great — who imagined that
all the nations were deHvered into the hand of
Tsardom — can do nothing. It can do nothing
because it does not exist. It has vanished for ever
at last, and as yet there is no new Russia to take
the place of that ill-omened creation, which, being
a fantasy of a madman's brain, could in reahty
be nothing else than a figure out of a nightmare
seated upon a monument of fear and oppression.

The true greatness of a State does not spring
from such a contemptible source. It is a matter
of logical growth, of faith and courage. Its inspira-
tion springs from the constructive instinct of the
people, governed by the strong hand of a collective
conscience and voiced in the wisdom and counsel
of men who seldom reap the reward of gratitude.

122 AUTOCRACY AND WAR

Many States have been powerful, but, perhaps,
none have been truly great — as yet. That the
position of a State in reference to the moral
methods of its development can be seen only
historically, is true. Perhaps mankind has not
lived long enough for a comprehensive view of
any particular case. Perhaps no one will ever
Hve long enough; and perhaps this earth shared
out amongst our clashing ambitions by the anxious
arrangements of statesmen will come to an end
before we attain the feUcity of greeting with un-
animous applause the perfect fruition of a great
State. It is even possible that we are destined
for another sort of bHss altogether : that sort
which consists in being perpetually duped by false
appearances. But whatever poHtical illusion the
future may hold out to our fear or our admira-
tion, there will be none, it is safe to say, which in
the magnitude of anti-humanitarian effect will
equal that phantom now driven out of the world
by the thunder of thousands of guns; none that
in its retreat will cHng with an equally shameless
sincerity to more unworthy supports : to the moral
corruption and mental darkness of slavery, to the
mere brute force of numbers.

This very ignominy of infatuation should make
clear to men's feelings and reason that the down-
fall of Russia's might is unavoidable. Spectral it
Hved and spectral it disappears without leaving a

AUTOCRACY AND WAR 123

memory of a single generous deed, of a single ser-
vice rendered — even involuntarily — to the polity
of nations. Other despotisms there have been, but
none whose origin was so grimly fantastic in its
baseness, and the beginning of whose end was so
gruesomely ignoble. What is amazing is the myth
of its irresistible strength which is dying so hard.

Considered historically, Russia's influence in
Europe seems the most baseless thing in the
world; a sort of convention invented by diplo-
matists for some dark purpose of their own, one
would suspect, if the lack of grasp upon the
reaHties of any given situation were not the main
characteristic of the management of international
relations. A glance back at the last hundred years
shows the invariable, one may say the logical,
powerlessness of Russia. As a military power it has
never achieved by itself a single great thing. It
has been indeed able to repel an ill-considered inva-
sion, but only by having recourse to the extreme
methods of desperation. In its attacks upon its
specially selected victim this giant always struck
as if with a withered right hand. All the cam-
paigns against Turkey prove this, from Potemkin's
time to the last Eastern war in 1878, entered upon
with every advantage of a well-nursed prestige
and a carefully fostered fanaticism. Even the

124 AUTOCRACY AND WAR

half-armed were always too much for the might
of Russia, or, rather, of the Tsardom. It was vic-
torious only against the practically disarmed, as,
in regard to its ideal of territorial expansion, a
glance at a map will prove sufficiently. As an
ally, Russia has been always unprofitable, taking
her share in the defeats rather than in the vic-
tories of her friends, but always pushing her own
claims with the arrogance of an arbiter of military
success. She has been unable to help to any pur-
pose a single principle to hold its own, not even
the principle of authority and legitimism which
Nicholas the First had declared so haughtily to
rest under his special protection; just as Nicholas
the Second has tried to make the maintenance of
peace on earth his own exclusive affair. And the
first Nicholas was a good Russian; he held the
beHef in the sacredness of his realm with such an
intensity of faith that he could not survive the
first shock of doubt. Rightly envisaged, the
Crimean war was the end of what remained of
absolutism and legitimism in Europe. It threw
the way open for the hberation of Italy. The
war in Manchuria makes an end of absolutism
in Russia, whoever has got to perish from the
shock behind a rampart of dead ukases, mani-
festoes, and rescripts. In the space of fifty years
the self-appointed Apostle of Absolutism and the
self-appointed Apostle of Peace, the Augustus and

AUTOCRACY AND WAR 125

the Augustulus of the regime that was wont to
speak contemptuously to European Foreign Offices
in the beautiful French phrases of Prince Gor-
chakov, have fallen victims, each after his kind,
to their shadowy and dreadful familiar, to the
phantom, part ghoul, part Djinn, part Old Man
of the Sea, with beak and claws and a double
head, looking greedily both east and west on the
confines of two continents.

That nobody through all that time penetrated
the true nature of the monster it is impossible to
believe. But of the many who must have seen,
all were either too modest, too cautious, perhaps
too discreet, to speak; or else were too insignifi-
cant to be heard or believed. Yet not all.

In the very early sixties, Prince Bismarck, then
about to leave his post of Prussian Minister in St.
Petersburg, called — so the story goes — upon an-
other distinguished diplomatist. After some talk
upon the general situation, the future Chancellor
of the German Empire remarked that it was his
practice to resume the impressions he had carried
out of every country where he had made a long
stay, in a short sentence, which he caused to be
engraved upon some trinket. " I am leaving this
country now, and this is what I bring away from
it," he continued, taking off his finger a new ring
to show to his colleague the inscription inside:
" La Russie, c'est le neant."

126 AUTOCRACY AND WAR

Prince Bismarck had the truth of the matter
and was neither too modest nor too discreet to
speak out. Certainly he was not afraid of not
being beheved. Yet he did not shout his know-
ledge from the house-tops. He meant to have the
phantom as his accompHce in an enterprise which
has set the clock of peace back for many a year.

He had his way. The German Empire has been
an accomplished fact for more than a third of a
century — a great and dreadful legacy left to the
world by the ill-omened phantom of Russia's
might.

It is that phantom which is disappearing now —
unexpectedly, astonishingly, as if by a touch of that
wonderful magic for which the East has always
been famous. The pretence of beHef in its exist-
ence will no longer answer anybody's purposes
(now Prince Bismarck is dead) unless the purposes
of the writers of sensational paragraphs as to this
Neant making an armed descent upon the plains
of India. That sort of folly would be beneath
notice if it did not distract attention from the real
problem created for Europe by a war in the Far
East.

For good or evil in the working out of her
destiny, Russia is bound to remain a Neant for
many long years, in a more even than a Bis-
marckian sense. The very fear of this spectre being
gone, it behoves us to consider its legacy — the

AUTOCRACY AND WAR 127

fact (no phantom that) accompHshed in Central
Europe by its help and connivance.

The German Empire may feel at bottom the
loss of an old accomplice always amenable to the
confidential whispers of a bargain; but in the first
instance it cannot but rejoice at the fundamental
weakening of a possible obstacle to its instincts
of territorial expansion. There is a removal of
that latent feeHng of restraint which the presence
of a powerful neighbour, however implicated with
you in a sense of common guilt, is bound to inspire.
The common guilt of the two Empires is defined
precisely by their frontier line running through the
PoHsh provinces. Without indulging in excessive
feehngs of indignation at that country's partition,
or going so far as to believe — with a late French
poHtician — in the *' immanente justice des choses,"
it is clear that a material situation, based upon an
essentially immoral transaction, contains the germ
of fatal differences in the temperament of the two
partners in iniquity — whatever the iniquity is.
Germany has been the evil counsellor of Russia
on all the questions of her PoHsh problem.
Always urging the adoption of the most repres-
sive measures with a perfectly logical duphcity,
Prince Bismarck's Empire has taken care to couple
the neighbourly offers of mihtary assistance with
merciless advice. The thought of the Polish
provinces accepting a frank reconcihation with

128 AUTOCRACY AND WAR

a humanised Russia and bringing the weight of
homogeneous loyalty within a few miles of Berhn,
has been always intensely distasteful to the arro-
gant Germanising tendencies of the other partner
in iniquity. And, besides, the way to the Baltic
provinces leads over the Niemen and over the
Vistula.

And now, when there is a possibility of serious
internal disturbances destroying the sort of order
autocracy has kept in Russia, the road over these
rivers is seen wearing a more inviting aspect. At
any momient the pretext of armed intervention
may be found in a revolutionary outbreak pro-
voked by SociaHsts, perhaps — but at any rate by
the political immaturity of the enhghtened classes
and by the pohtical barbarism of the Russian
people. The throes of Russian resurrection will be
long and painful. This is not the place to speculate
upon the nature of these convulsions, but there
must be some violent break-up of the lamentable
tradition, a shattering of the social, of the ad-
ministrative— certainly of the territorial — unity.

Voices have been heard saying that the time for
reforms in Russia is already past. This is the
superficial view of the more profound truth that for
Russia there has never been such a time within the
memory of mankind. It is impossible to initiate a
rational scheme of reform upon a phase of bhnd
absolutism; and in Russia there has never been

AUTOCRACY AND WAR

129

anything else to which the faintest tradition could,
after ages of error, go back as to a parting of ways.

In Europe the old monarchical principle stands
justified in its historical struggle with the growth of
political liberty by the evolution of the idea of
nationality as we see it concreted at the present
time; by the inception of that wider solidarity
grouping together around the standard of mon-
archical power these larger agglomerations of
mankind. This service of unification, creating
close-knit communities possessing the ability, the
will, and the power to pursue a common ideal,
has prepared the ground for the advent of a
still larger understanding: for the solidarity of
Europeanism, which must be the next step towards
the advent of Concord and Justice; an advent
that, however delayed by the fatal worship of
force and the errors of national selfishness, has
been, and remains, the only possible goal of our
progress.

The conceptions of legality, of larger patriotism,
of national duties and aspirations have grown
under the shadow of the old monarchies of
Europe, which were the creations of historical
necessity. There were seeds of wisdom in their
very mistakes and abuses. They had a past and
a future; they were human. But under the
shadow of Russian autocracy nothing could grow.
Russian autocracy succeeded to nothing; it had

130 AUTOCRACY AND WAR

no historical past, and it cannot hope for a his-
torical future. It can only end. By no industry
of investigation, by no fantastic stretch of bene-
volence, can it be presented as a phase of develop-
ment through which a Society, a State, must pass
on the way to the full consciousness of its destiny. It
Hes outside the stream of progress. This despotism
has been utterly un-European. Neither has it
been Asiatic in its nature. Oriental despotisms
belong to the history of mankind; they have
left their trace on our minds and our imagination
by their splendour, by their culture, by their art,
by the exploits of great conquerors. The record
of their rise and decay has an intellectual value;
they are in their origins and their course the
manifestations of human needs, the instruments of
racial temperament, of catastrophic force, of faith
and fanaticism. The Russian autocracy as we see
it now is a thing apart. It is impossible to assign
to it any rational origin in the vices, the misfor-
tunes, the necessities, or the aspirations of mankind.
That despotism has neither an European nor an
Oriental parentage; more, it seems to have no root
either in the institutions or the follies of this earth.
What strikes one with a sort of awe is just this
something inhuman in its character. It is like a
visitation, Hke a curse from Heaven falling in the
darkness of ages upon the immense plains of forest
and steppe lying dumbly on the confines of two

AUTOCRACY AND WAR 131

continents: a true desert harbouring no Spirit
either of the East or of the West.

This pitiful fate of a country held by an evil
spell, suffering from an awful visitation for which
the responsibility cannot be traced either to her
sins or her follies, has made Russia as a nation so
difficult to understand by Europe. From the very
first ghastly dawn of her existence as a State she
had to breathe the atmosphere of despotism; she
found nothing but the arbitrary will of an obscure
autocrat at the beginning and end of her organisa-
tion. Hence arises her impenetrability to whatever
is true in Western thought. Western thought,
when it crosses her frontier, falls under the spell
of her autocracy and becomes a noxious parody
of itself. Hence the contradictions, the riddles of
her national hfe, which are looked upon with such
curiosity by the rest of the world. The curse had
entered her very soul; autocracy, and nothing else
in the world, has moulded her institutions, and with
the poison of slavery drugged the national tempera-
ment into the apathy of a hopeless fatalism. It
seems to have gone into the blood, tainting every
mental activity in its source by a half-mystical,
insensate, fascinating assertion of purity and hoH-
ness. The Government of Holy Russia, arrogating
to itself the supreme power to torment and slaugh-
ter the bodies of its subjects Hke a God-sent
scourge, has been most cruel to those whom it

/

132 AUTOCRACY AND WAR

allowed to live under the shadow of its dispensa-
tion. The worst crime against humanity of that
system we behold now crouching at bay behind
vast heaps of mangled corpses is the ruthless
destruction of innumerable minds. The greatest
horror of the world — madness — walked faithfully
in its train. Some of the best intellects of Russia,
after struggHng in vain against the spell, ended by
throwing themselves at the feet of that hopeless
despotism as a giddy man leaps into an abyss. An
attentive survey of Russia's literature, of her
Church, of her administration and the cross-cur-
rents of her thought, must end in the verdict that
the Russia of to-day has not the right to give her
voice on a single question touching the future of
humanity, because from the very inception of her
being the brutal destruction of dignity, of truth,
of rectitude, of all that is faithful in human nature
has been made the imperative condition of her
existence. The great governmental secret of that
imperium which Prince Bismarck had the insight
and the courage to call Le Neant^ has been the
extirpation of every intellectual hope. To pro-
nounce in the face of such a past the word Evolu-
tion, which is precisely the expression of the
highest intellectual hope, is a gruesome pleasantry.
There can be no evolution out of a grave. Another
word of less scientific sound has been very much
pronounced of late in connection with Russia's

AUTOCRACY AND WAR 133

future, a word of more vague import, a word of
dread as much as of hope — Revolution.

In the face of the events of the last four months,
this word has sprung instinctively, as it were, on
grave lips, and has been heard with solemn fore-
bodings. More or less consciously, Europe is pre-
paring herself for a spectacle of much violence and
perhaps of an inspiring nobility of greatness. And
there will be nothing of what she expects. She will
see neither the anticipated character of the violence,
nor yet any signs of generous greatness. Her ex-
pectations, more or less vaguely expressed, give
the measure of her ignorance of that Neant which
for so many years had remained hidden behind
this phantom of invincible armies.

Neant I In a way, yes ! And yet perhaps Prince
Bismarck has let himself be led away by the seduc-
tion of a good phrase into the use of an inexact
form. The form of his judgment had to be pithy,
striking, engraved within a ring. If he erred, then,
no doubt, he erred deliberately. The saying was
near enough the truth to serve, and perhaps he
did not want to destroy utterly by a more severe
definition the prestige of the sham that could not
deceive his genius. Prince Bismarck has been
really complimentary to the useful phantom of the
autocratic might. There is an awe-inspiring idea
of infinity conveyed in the word Neant — and in
Russia there is no idea. She is not a Neant ^ she is

134 AUTOCRACY AND WAR

and has been simply the negation of everything
worth Hving for. She is not an empty void, she is
a yawning chasm open between East and West; a
bottomless abyss that has swallowed up every hope
of mercy, every aspiration towards personal dig-
nity, towards freedom, towards knowledge, every
ennobling desire of the heart, every redeeming
whisper of conscience. Those that have peered
into that abyss, where the dreams of Panslavism,
of universal conquest, mingled with the hate and
contempt for Western ideas, drift impotently Hke
shapes of mist, know well that it is bottomless;
that there is in it no ground for anything that
could in the remotest degree serve even the lowest
interests of mankind — and certainly no ground
ready for a revolution. The sin of the old European
monarchies was not the absolutism inherent in
every form of government; it was the inabiHty to
alter the forms of their legality, grown narrow and
oppressive with the march of time. Every form oi^
legality is bound to degenerate into oppression,
and the legality in the forms of monarchical in-
stitutions sooner, perhaps, than any other. It has
not been the business of monarchies to be adaptive
from within. With the mission of uniting and con-
solidating the particular ambitions and interests
of feudalism in favour of a larger conception of
a State, of giving self-consciousness, force and
nationahty to the scattered energies of thought and

AUTOCRACY AND WAR 135

action, they were fated to lag behind the march of
ideas they had themselves set in motion in a direc-
tion they could neither understand nor approve.
Yet, for all that, the thrones still remain, and what
is more significant, perhaps, some of the dynasties,
too, have survived. The revolutions of European
States have never been in the nature of absolute
protests en masse against the monarchical prin-
ciple; they were the uprising of the people against
the oppressive degeneration of legality. But there
never has been any legality in Russia; she is a
negation of that as of everything else that has its
root in reason or conscience. The ground of every
revolution had to be intellectually prepared. A
revolution is a short cut in the rational develop-
ment of national needs in response to the growth
of world-wide ideals. It is conceivably possible
for a monarch of genius to put himself at the head
of a revolution without ceasing to be the king of
his people. For the autocracy of Holy Russia the
only conceivable self-reform is — suicide.

The same relentless fate holds in its grip the all-
powerful ruler and his helpless people. Wi elders
of a power purchased by an unspeakable baseness
of subjection to the Khans of the Tartar horde,
the Princes of Russia who, in their heart of hearts
had come in time to regard themselves as superior
to every monarch of Europe, have never risen to
be the chiefs of a nation. Their authority has never

136 AUTOCRACY AND WAR

been sanctioned by popular tradition, by ideas of
intelligent loyalty, of devotion, of political neces-
sity, of simple expediency, or even by the power
of the sword. In whatever form of upheaval
autocratic Russia is to find her end, it can never
be a revolution fruitful of moral consequences
to mankind. It cannot be anything else but
a rising of slaves. It is a tragic circumstance
that the only thing one can wish to that people
who had never seen face to face either law, order,
justice, right, truth about itself or the rest of the
world; who had known nothing outside the capri-
cious will of its irresponsible masters, is that it
should find in the approaching hour of need, not
an organiser or a law-giver, with the wisdom of a
Lycurgus or a Solon for their service, but at least
the force of energy and desperation in some as yet
unknown Spartacus.

A brand of hopeless mental and moral inferiority
is set upon Russian achievements; and the coming
events of her internal changes, however appalling
they may be in their magnitude, will be nothing
more impressive than the convulsions of a colossal
body. As her boasted mihtary force that, corrupt
in its origin, has ever struck no other but faltering
blows, so her soul, kept benumbed by her temporal
and spiritual master with the poison of tyranny
and superstition, will find itself on awakening
possessed of no language, a monstrous full-grown

AUTOCRACY AND WAR 137

child having first to learn the ways of living
thought and articulate speech. It is safe to say
tyranny, assuming a thousand protean shapes, will
remain chnging to her struggles for a long time
before her bhnd multitudes succeed at last in
trampling her out of existence under their millions
of bare feet.

That would be the beginning. What is to come
after ? The conquest of freedom to call your soul
your own is only the first step on the road to ex-
cellence. We, in Europe, have gone a step or two
further, have had the time to forget how little that
freedom means. To Russia it must seem every-
thing. A prisoner shut up in a noisome dungeon
concentrates all his hope and desire on the moment
of stepping out beyond the gates. It appears to
him pregnant with an immense and final import-
ance; whereas what is important is the spirit in
which he will draw the first breath of freedom,
the counsels he will hear, the hands he may find
extended, the endless days of toil that must
follow, wherein he will have to build his future
with no other material but what he can find within
himself.

It would be vain for Russia to hope for the
support and counsel of collective wisdom. Since
1870 (as a distinguished statesman of the old
tradition disconsolately exclaimed) " il n'y a plus
d'Europe! " There is, indeed, no Europe. The

138 AUTOCRACY AND WAR

idea of a Europe united in the solidarity of her
dynasties, which for a moment seemed to dawn
on the horizon of the Vienna Congress through
the subsiding dust of Napoleonic alarums and
excursions, has been extinguished by the larger
glamour of less restraining ideals. Instead of the
doctrines of soHdarity it was the doctrine of nation-
ahties much more favourable to spoliations that
came to the front, and since its greatest triumphs
at Sadowa and Sedan there is no Europe. Mean-
while till the time comes when there will be no
frontiers, there are alliances so shamelessly based
upon the exigencies of suspicion and mistrust that
their cohesive force waxes and wanes with every
year, almost with the event of every passing
month. This is the atmosphere Russia will find
when the last rampart of tyranny has been beaten
down. But what hands, what voices will she find
on coming out into the light of day ? An ally she
has yet who more than any other of Russia's allies
has found that it had parted with lots of sohd
substance in exchange for a shadow. It is true that
the shadow was indeed the mightiest, the darkest
that the modern world had ever known — and the
most overbearing. But it is fading now, and the
tone of truest anxiety as to what is to take its place
will come, no doubt, from that and no other direc-
tion, and no doubt, also, it wiU have that note of
generosity which even in the moments of greatest

AUTOCRACY AND WAR 139

aberration is seldom wanting in the voice of the
French people.

Two neighbours Russia will find at her door.
Austria, traditionally unaggressive whenever her
hand is not forced, ruled by a dynasty of uncer-
tain future, weakened by her duahty, can only
speak to her in an uncertain, bi-lingual phrase.
Prussia, grown in something like forty years from
an almost pitiful dependant into a bullying friend
and evil counsellor of Russia's masters, may, in-
deed, hasten to extend a strong hand to the weak-
ness of her exhausted body, but if so it will be
only with the intention of tearing away the long-
coveted part of her substance.

Pan-Germanism is by no means a shape of
mists, and Germany is anything but a Neant
where thought and effort are likely to lose them-
selves without sound or trace. It is a powerful and
voracious organisation, full of unscrupulous self-
confidence, whose appetite for aggrandisement will
only be limited by the power of helping itself to
the severed members of its friends and neighbours.
The era of wars so eloquently denounced by the
old Republicans as the peculiar blood guilt of
dynastic ambitions is by no means over yet. They
will be fought out differently, with lesser frequency,
with an increased bitterness and the savage tooth-
and-claw obstinacy of a struggle for existence.
They will make us regret the time of dynastic

140 AUTOCRACY AND WAR

ambitions, with their human absurdity moderated
by prudence and even by shame, by the fear of
personal responsibihty and the regard paid to cer-
tain forms of conventional decency. For, if the
monarchs of Europe have been derided for address-
ing each other as *' brother " in autograph com-
munications, that relationship was at least as
effective as any form of brotherhood likely to be
estabhshed between the rival nations of this con-
tinent, which, we are assured on all hands, is the
heritage of democracy. In the ceremonial brother-
hood of monarchs the reality of blood-ties, for what
little it is worth, acted often as a drag on un-
scrupulous desires of glory or greed. Besides, there
was always the common danger of exasperated
peoples, and some respect for each other's divine
right. No leader of a democracy, without other
ancestry but the sudden shout of a multitude, and
debarred by the very condition of his power from
even thinking of a direct heir, will have any interest
in calhng brother the leader of another democracy
— a chief as fatherless and heirless as himself.

The war of 1870, brought about by the third
Napoleon's half-generous, half-selfish adoption of
the principle of nationalities, was the first war
characterised by a special intensity of hate, by a
new note in the tune of an old song for which we
may thank the Teutonic thoroughness. Was it
not that excellent bourgeoise. Princess Bismarck

AUTOCRACY AND WAR 141

(to keep only to great examples), who was so
righteously anxious to see men, women and children
— emphatically the children, too — of the abomin-
able French nation massacred off the face of the
earth ? This illustration of the new war-temper is
artlessly revealed in the prattle of the amiable
Busch, the Chancellor's pet " reptile " of the Press.
And this was supposed to be a war for an idea!
Too much, however, should not be made of that
good wife's and mother's sentiments any more
than of the good First Emperor William's tears,
shed so abundantly after every battle, by letter,
telegram, and otherwise, during the course of the
same war, before a dumb and shamefaced con-
tinent. These were merely the expressions of the
simpHcity of a nation which more than any other
has a tendency to run into the grotesque. There
is worse to come.

To-day, in the fierce grapple of two nations of
different race, the short era of national wars seems
about to close. No war will be waged for an idea.
The " noxious idle aristocracies " of yesterday
fought without mahce for an occupation, for the
honour, for the fun of the thing. The virtuous,
industrious democratic States of to-morrow may
yet be reduced to fighting for a crust of dry bread,
with all the hate, ferocity, and fury that must
attach to the vital importance of such an issue.
The dreams sanguine humanitarians raised almost

142 AUTOCRACY AND WAR

to ecstasy about the year fifty of the last century
by the moving sight of the Crystal Palace —
crammed full with that variegated rubbish which
it seems to be the bizarre fate of humanity to
produce for the benefit of a few employers of
labour — have vanished as quickly as they had
arisen. The golden hopes of peace have in a single
night turned to dead leaves in every drawer of
every benevolent theorist's writing table. A swift
disenchantment overtook the incredible infatua-
tion which could put its trust in the peaceful
nature of industrial and commercial competition.

IndustriaHsm and commercialism — wearing high-
sounding names in many languages {W eli-politik
may serve for one instance) picking up coins behind
the severe and disdainful figure of science whose
giant strides have widened for us the horizon of
the universe by some few inches — stand ready,
almost eager, to appeal to the sword as soon as
the globe of the earth has shrunk beneath our
growing numbers by another ell or so. And democ- ''
racy, which has elected to pin its faith to the
supremacy of material interests, will have to fight
their battles to the bitter end, on a mere pittance
— unless, indeed, some statesman of exceptional
abiHty and overwhelming prestige succeeds in
carrying through an international understanding i
for the deHmitation of spheres of trade all over \
the earth, on the model of the territorial spheres

AUTOCRACY AND WAR 143

of influence marked in Africa to keep the com- / ^
petitors for the privilege of improving the nigger
(as a buying machine) from flying prematurely aF
each other's throats.

This seems the only expedient at hand for the
temporary maintenance of European peace, with
its alliances based on mutual distrust, preparedness
for war as its ideal, and the fear of wounds, luckily
stronger, so far, than the pinch of hunger, its only
guarantee. The true peace of the world will be a
place of refugemiich less like a beleaguered fortress
and more, let us hope, in the nature of an Inviol-
able Temple. It_will._beJhii.ilt on less perishable
foundations than those of material interests. But
it must be confessed that the architectural aspect
of the universal city remains as yet inconceivable
— that the very ground for its erection has not been
cleared of the jungle.

Never before in history has the right of war
been more fully admitted in the rounded periods
of pubHc speeches, in books, in public prints,
in all the public works of peace, culminating in
the establishment of the Hague Tribunal — that
solemnly official recognition of the Earth as a
House of Strife. To him whose indignation is
qualifled by a measure of hope and affection, the
efforts of mankind to work its own salvation
present a sight of alarming comicahty. After
chnging for ages to the steps of the heavenly

144 AUTOCRACY AND WAR

throne, they are now, without much modifying
their attitude, trying with touching ingenuity to
steal one by one the thunderbolts of their Jupiter.
They have removed war from the Hst of Heaven-
sent visitations that could only be prayed
against; they have erased its name from the
suppHcation against the wrath of war, pestilence,
and famine, as it is found in the litanies of the
Roman Catholic Church; they have dragged the
scourge down from the skies and have made it
into a calm and regulated institution. At first
sight the change does not seem for the better.
Jove's thunderbolt looks a most dangerous play-
thing in the hands of the people. But a solemnly
estabhshed institution begins to grow old at once
in the discussion, abuse, worship, and execration
of men. It grows obsolete, odious, and intolerable;
it stands fatally condemned to an unhonoured old
age.

Therein lies the best hope of advanced thought,
and the best way to help its prospects is to provide
in the fullest, frankest way for the conditions of
the present day. War is one of its conditions; it
is its principal condition. It lies at the heart of
every question agitating the fears and hopes of a
humanity divided against itself. The succeeding
ages have changed nothing except the watchwords
of the armies. The intellectual stage of mankind '
being as yet in its infancy, and States, like most

AUTOCRACY AND WAR 145

individuals, having but a feeble and imperfect con-
sciousness of the worth and force of the inner
Hfe, the need of making their existence manifest
to themselves is determined in the direction of
physical activity. The idea of ceasing to grow in •
territory, in strength, in wealth, in influence — in
anything but wisdom and self-knowledge — is odious
to them as the omen of the end. Action, in which •
is to be found the illusion of a mastered destiny,
can alone satisfy our uneasy vanity and lay to
rest the haunting fear of the future — a sentiment
concealed, indeed, but proving its existence by
the force it has, when invoked, to stir the passions
of a nation. It will be long before w^e have learned,
that in the great darkness before us there is nothing
that we need fear. Let us act lest we perish — is
the cry. And the only form of action open to a
State can be of no other than aggressive nature.

There are many kinds of aggressions, though
the sanction of them is one and the same — the
magazine rifle of the latest pattern. In preparation
for or against that form of action the States of
Europe are spending now such moments of uneasy
leisure as they can snatch from the labours of
factory and counting-house.

Never before has war received so much homage
at the Hps of men, and reigned with less
disputed sway in their minds. It has harnessed
science to its gun-carriages, it has enriched a few

K

V

146 AUTOCRACY AND WAR

respectable manufacturers, scattered doles of food
and raiment amongst a few thousand skilled work-
men, devoured the first youth of whole generations,
and reaped its harvest of countless corpses. It has
perverted the intelligence of men, women, and chil-
dren, and has made the speeches of Emperors,
Kings, Presidents, and Ministers monotonous with
ardent protestations of fidelity to peace. Indeed,
war has made peace altogether its own, it has
modelled it on its own image: a martial, over-
bearing, war-lord sort of peace, with a mailed fist,
and turned-up moustaches, ringing with the din
of grand manoeuvres, eloquent with allusions to
glorious feats of arms; it has made peace so magni-
ficent as to be almost as expensive to keep up as
itself. It has sent out apostles of its own, who
at one time went about (mostly in newspapers)
preaching the gospel of the mystic sanctity of its
sacrifices, and the regenerating power of spilt
blood, to the poor in mind — whose name is legion.
It has been observed that in the course of earthly
greatness a day of culminating triumph is often
paid for by a morrow of sudden extinction. Let
us hope it is so. Yet the dawn of that day of retri-
bution may be a long time breaking above a dark
horizon. War is with us now; and, whether this
one ends soon or late, war will be with us again.
And it is the way of true wisdom for men and
States to take account of things as they are.

AUTOCRACY AND WAR 147

Civilisation has done its little best by our sen-
sibilities for whose growth it is responsible. It
has managed to remove the sights and sounds of
battlefields away from our doorsteps. But it can-
not be expected to achieve the feat always and
under every variety of circumstance. Some day
it must fail, and we shall have then a wealth of
appallingly unpleasant sensations brought home
to us with painful intimacy. It is not absurd to
suppose that whatever war comes to us next it
will 7tot be a distant war waged by Russia either
beyond the Amur or beyond the Oxus.

The Japanese armies have laid that ghost for
ever, because the Russia of the future will not,
for the reasons explained above, be the Russia of
to-day. It will not have the same thoughts,
resentments and aims. It is even a question
whether it will preserve its gigantic frame un-
altered and unbroken. All speculation loses itself
in the magnitude of the events made possible by
the defeat of an autocracy whose only shadow of
a title to existence was the invincible power of
military conquest. That autocratic Russia wiU
have a miserable end in harmony with its base
origin and inglorious life does not seem open to
doubt. The problem of the immediate future is
posed not by the eventual manner but by the
approaching fact of its disappearance.

The Japanese armies, in laying the oppressive

148 AUTOCRACY AND WAR

ghost, have not only accomplished what will be
recognised historically as an important mission in
the world's struggle against all forms of evil, but
have also created a situation. They have created
a situation in the East which they are competent
to manage by themselves; and in doing this they
have brought about a change in the condition of
the West with which Europe is not well prepared
to deal. The common ground of concord, good
faith and justice is not sufficient to estabhsh an
action upon; since the conscience of but very
few men amongst us, and of no single Western
nation as yet, will brook the restraint of abstract
ideas as against the fascination of a material ad-
vantage. And eagle-e)'ed wisdom alone cannot
take the lead of human action, which in its nature
must for ever remain short-sighted. The trouble
of the civihsed world is the want of a common
conservative principle abstract enough to give the
im_pulse, practical enough to form the rallying
point of international action tending towards the
restraint of particular ambitions. Peace tribunals
instituted for the greater glory of war will not
replace it. Whether such a principle exists — who
can say? If it does not, then it ought to be in-
vented. A sage with a sense of humour and a heart
of compassion should set about it without loss of
time, and a solemn prophet full of words and fire
ought to be given the task of preparing the minds.

AUTOCRACY AND WAR 149

So far there is no trace of such a principle any-
where in sight; even its plausible imitations (never
very effective) have disappeared long ago before
the doctrine of national aspirations. // «'y a -plus
d^ Europe — there is only an armed and trading con-
tinent, the home of slowly maturing economical
contests for Hfe and death and of loudly pro-
claimed world-wide ambitions. There are also
other ambitions not so loud, but deeply rooted in
the envious acquisitive temperament of the last
comer amongst the great Powers of the Continent,
whose feet are not exactly in the ocean — not yet —
and whose head is very high up — in Pomerania,
the breeding place of such precious Grenadiers
that Prince Bismarck (whom it is a pleasure to
quote) would not have given the bones of one of
them for the settlement of the old Eastern Ques-
tion. But times have changed, since, by way of
keeping up, I suppose, some old barbaric German
rite, the faithful servant of the Hohenzollerns was
buried alive to celebrate the accession of a new
Emperor.

Already the voice of surmises has been heard
hinting tentatively at a possible re-grouping of
European Powers. The alliance of the three
Empires is supposed possible. And it may be
possible. The myth of Russia's power is dying
very hard — hard enough for that combination
to take place — such is the fascination that a

ISO AUTOCRACY AND WAR

discredited show of numbers will still exercise
upon the imagination of a people trained to
the worship of force. Germany may be willing
to lend its support to a tottering autocracy for
the sake of an undisputed first place, and of a
preponderating voice in the settlement of every
question in that south-east of Europe which
merges into Asia. No principle being involved in
such an alliance of mere expediency, it would
never be allowed to stand in the way of Germany's
other ambitions. The fall of autocracy would bring
its restraint automatically to an end. Thus it may
be beheved that the support Russian despotism
may get from its once humble friend and client
will not be stamped by that thoroughness which
is supposed to be the mark of German superiority.
Russia weakened down to the second place, or
Russia eclipsed altogether during the throes of
her regeneration, will answer equally well the
plans of German policy — which are many and
various and often incredible, though the aim of
them all is the same: aggrandisement of territory
and influence, with no regard to right and justice,
either in the East or in the West. For that and no
other is the true note of your Welt-politik which
desires to hve.

The German eagle with a Prussian head looks
all round the horizon, not so much for something
to do that would count for good in the records of

AUTOCRACY AND WAR 151

the earth, as simply for something good to get.
He gazes upon the land and upon the sea with the
same covetous steadiness, for he has become of
late a maritime eagle, and has learned to box the
compass. He gazes north and south, and east and
west, and is inclined to look intemperately upon
the waters of the Mediterranean when they are
blue. The disappearance of the Russian phantom
has given a foreboding of unwonted freedom to the
Welt-politik, According to the national tendency
this assumption of Imperial impulses would run
into the grotesque were it not for the spikes of the
pickelhaubes peeping out grimly from behind. Ger-
many's attitude proves that no peace for the earth
can be found in the expansion of material interests
which she seems to have adopted exclusively as
her only aim, ideal, and watchword. For the use
of those who gaze half-unbelieving at the passing
away of the Russian phantom, part Ghoul, part
Djinn, part Old Man of the Sea, and wait half-
doubting for the birth of a nation's soul in this
age which knows no miracles, the once-famous
saying of poor Gambetta, tribune of the people
(who was simple and believed in the " immanent
justice of things "), may be adapted in the shape of
a warning that, so far as a future of liberty, con-
cord, and justice is concerned: " Le Prussianisme
— voila I'ennemi! "

THE CRIME OF PARTITION

1919

At the end of the eighteenth century, when the
partition of Poland had become an accomplished
fact, the world quaHfied it at once as a crime. This
strong condemnation proceeded, of course, from
the West of Europe; the Powers of the Centre,
Prussia and Austria, were not likely to admit
that this spoliation fell into the category of acts
morally reprehensible and carrying the taint of
anti-social guilt. As to Russia, the third party to
the crime, and the originator of the scheme, she
had no national conscience at the time. The will
of its rulers was always accepted by the people as
the expression of an omnipotence derived directly
from God. As an act of mere conquest the best
excuse for the partition lay simply in the fact
that it happened to be possible; there was the
plunder and there was the opportunity to get hold
of it. Catherine the Great looked upon this exten-
sion of her dominions with a cynical satisfaction.
Her poHtical argument that the destruction of
Poland meant the repression of revolutionary ideas
and the checking of the spread of Jacobinism in

^53

154 CRIME OF PARTITION

Europe was a characteristically impudent pre-
tence. There may have been minds here and there
amongst the Russians that perceived, or perhaps
only felt, that by the annexation of the greater
part of the PoHsh Repubhc, Russia approached
nearer to the comity of civihsed nations and ceased,
at least territorially, to be an Asiatic Power.

It was only after the partition of Poland that
Russia began to play a great part in Europe.
To such statesmen as she had then that act of
brigandage must have appeared inspired by great
political wisdom. The King of Prussia, faithful
to the ruling principle of his life, wished simply to
aggrandise his dominions at a much smaller cost
and at much less risk than he could have done in
any other direction; for at that time Poland was
perfectly defenceless from a material point of
view, and more than ever, perhaps, incHned to put
its faith in humanitarian illusions. Morally, the
Repubhc was in a state of ferment and consequent
weakness, which so often accompanies the period
of social reform. The strength arrayed against her
was just then overwhelming; I mean the com-
paratively honest (because open) strength of armed
forces. But, probably from innate inclination to-
wards treachery, Frederick of Prussia selected for
himself the part of falsehood and deception. Ap-
pearing on the scene in the character of a friend
he entered deliberately into a treaty of alhance

CRIME OF PARTITION 155

with the RepubHc, and then, before the ink was
dry, tore it up in brazen defiance of the com-
monest decency, which must have been extremely
gratifying to his natural tastes.

As to Austria, it shed diplomatic tears over the
transaction. They cannot be called crocodile tears,
insomuch that they were in a measure sincere.
They arose from a vivid perception that Austria's
allotted share of the spoil could never compensate
her for the accession of strength and territory to
the other two Powers. Austria did not really want
an extension of territory at the cost of Poland.
She could not hope to improve her frontier in that
way, and economically she had no need of GaHcia,
a province whose natural resources were unde-
veloped and whose salt mines did not arouse her
cupidity because she had salt mines of her own.
No doubt the democratic complexion of Polish
institutions was very distasteful to the conserva-
tive monarchy; Austrian statesmen did see at
the time that the real danger to the principle of
autocracy was in the West, in France, and that
all the forces of Central Europe would be needed
for its suppression. But the movement towards a
partage on the part of Russia and Prussia was too
definite to be resisted, and Austria had to follow
their lead in the destruction of a State which she
would have preferred to preserve as a possible ally
against Prussian and Russian ambitions. It may be

iS6 CRIME OF PARTITION

truly said that the destruction of Poland secured
the safety of the French Revolution. For when in
1795 the crime was consummated, the Revolution
had turned the corner and was in a state to defend
itself against the forces of reaction.

In the second half of the eighteenth century there
were two centres of Hberal ideas on the continent
of Europe: France and Poland. On an impartial
survey one may say without exaggeration that then
France was relatively every bit as weak as Poland ;
even, perhaps, more so. But France's geographical
position made her much less vulnerable. She had
no powerful neighbours on her frontier; a decayed
Spain in the south and a conglomeration of small
German Principalities on the east were her happy
lot. The only States which dreaded the contamina-
tion of the new principles and had enough power
to combat it were Prussia, Austria, and Russia,
and they had another centre of forbidden ideas
to deal with in defenceless Poland, unprotected
by nature, and offering an immediate satisfaction
to their cupidity. They made their choice, and the
untold sufferings of a nation which would not die
was the price exacted by fate for the triumph of
revolutionary ideals.

Thus even a crime may become a moral agent

CjL by the lapse of time and the course of history.

Progress leaves its dead by the way, for progress

is only a great adventure as its leaders and chiefs

CRIME OF PARTITION 157

know very well in their hearts. It is a march into
an undiscovered country; and in such an enter-
prise the victims do not count. As an emotional
outlet for the oratory of freedom it was convenient
enough to remember the Crime now and then : the
Crime being the murder of a State and the carving
of its body into three pieces. There was really
nothing to do but to drop a few tears and a few
flowers of rhetoric upon the grave. But the spirit
of the nation refused to rest therein. It haunted
the territories of the Old RepubHc in the manner
of a ghost haunting its ancestral mansion where
strangers are making themselves at home; a
calumniated, ridiculed, and pooh-pooh'd ghost,
and yet never ceasing to inspire a sort of awe, a
strange uneasiness, in the hearts of the unlaw-
ful possessors. Poland deprived of its independ-
ence, of its historical continuity, with its rehgion
and language persecuted and repressed, became a
mere geographical expression. And even that,
itself, seemed strangely vague, had lost its definite
character, was rendered doubtful by the theories
and the claims of the spoHators who, by a strange
effect of uneasy conscience, while strenuously
denying the moral guilt of the transaction, were
always trying to throw a veil of high rectitude
over the Crime. What was most annoying to their
righteousness was the fact that the nation, stabbed
to the heart, refused to grow insensible and cold.

158 CRIME OF PARTITION

That persistent and almost uncanny vitality was
sometimes very inconvenient to the rest of Europe
also. It would intrude its irresistible claim into
every problem^ of European politics, into the theory
of European equilibrium, into the question of the
Near East, the Italian question, the question of
Schleswig-Holstein, and into the doctrine of nation-
alities. That ghost, not content with making its
ancestral halls uncomfortable for the thieves,
haunted also the Cabinets of Europe, waved
indecently its bloodstained robes in the solemn
atmosphere of Council-rooms, where congresses
and conferences sit with closed windows. It
would not be exorcised by the brutal jeers of
Bismarck and the fine railleries of Gorchakov.
As a PoHsh friend observed to me some years
ago : " Till the year '48 the Polish problem has
been to a certain extent a convenient rallying-
point for all manifestations of HberaHsm. Since
that time we have come to be regarded simply as
a nuisance. It's very disagreeable.''

I agreed that it was, and he continued : " What
are we to do ? We did not create the situation by
any outside action of ours. Through all the cen-
turies of its existence Poland has never been a
menace to anybody, not even to the Turks, to
whom it has been merely an obstacle."

Nothing could be more true. The spirit of
aggressiveness was absolutely foreign to the Polish

CRIME OF PARTITION 159

temperament, to which the preservation of its in-
stitutions and its liberties was much more precious
than any ideas of conquest. PoHsh wars were
defensive, and they were mostly fought within
Poland's own borders. And that those territories
were often invaded was but a misfortune arising
from its geographical position. Territorial expan-
sion was never the master-thought of Polish states-
men. The consolidation of the territories of the
serenissime Republic, which made of it a Power
of the first rank for a time, was not accomplished
by force. It was not the consequence of successful
aggression, but of a long and successful defence
against the raiding neighbours from the East. The
lands of Lithuanian and Ruthenian speech were
never conquered by Poland. These peoples were
not compelled by a series of exhausting wars to
seek safety in annexation. It was not the will of
a prince or a political intrigue that brought about
the union. Neither was it fear. The slowly-matured
view of the economical and social necessities and,
before aU, the ripening moral sense of the masses
were the motives that induced the forty-three
representatives of Lithuanian and Ruthenian
provinces, led by their paramount prince, to enter
into a poHtical combination unique in the history
of the world, a spontaneous and complete union of
sovereign States choosing deliberately the way of
peace. Never was strict truth better expressed in

i6o CRIME OF PARTITION

a political instrument than in the preamble of the
first Union Treaty (141 3). It begins with the
words : " This Union, being the outcome not of
hatred, but of love " — words that Poles have not
heard addressed to them poUtically by any nation
for the last hundred and fifty years.

This union being an organic, living thing capable
of growth and development was, later, modified and
confirmed by two other treaties, which guaranteed
to all the parties in a just and eternal union all
their rights, liberties, and respective institutions.
The PoHsh State offers a singular instance of an
extremely liberal administrative federalism which,
in its ParHamentary life as well as its international
politics, presented a complete unity of feehng
and purpose. As an eminent French diplomatist
remarked many years ago : " It is a very remark-
able fact in the history of the Polish State, this
invariable and unanimous consent of the popula-
tions; the more so that, the King being looked
upon simply as the chief of the Republic, there
was no monarchical bond, no dynastic fidelity to
control and guide the sentiment of the nations,
and their union remained as a pure affirmation of
the national will." The Grand Duchy of Lithu-
ania and its Ruthenian Provinces retained their
statutes, their own administration, and their own
political institutions. That those institutions in
the course of time tended to assimilation with the

CRIME OF PARTITION i6i

Polish form was not the result of any pressure,
but simply of the superior character of Polish
civiHsation.

Even after Poland lost its independence this
aUiance and this union remained firm in spirit and
fidehty. All the national movements towards
Hberation were initiated in the name of the whole
mass of people inhabiting the hmits of the old
RepubHc, and all the Provinces took part in them
with complete devotion. It is only in the last
generation that efforts have been made to create
a tendency towards separation, which would in-
deed serve no one but Poland's common enemies.
And, strangely enough, it is the internationalists,
men who professedly care nothing for race or
country, who have set themselves this task of
disruption, one can easily see for what sinister
purpose. The ways of the internationaHsts may
be dark, but they are not inscrutable.

From the same source no doubt there will flow
in the future a poisoned stream of hints of a re-
constituted Poland being a danger to the races
once so closely associated within the territories of
the Old Republic. The old partners in " the
Crime " are not likely to forgive their victim its
inconvenient and almost shocking obstinacy in
keeping aHve. They had tried moral assassination
before and with some small measure of success,
for, indeed, the PoHsh question, hke all Hving

L

i62 CRIME OF PARTITION

reproaches, had become a nuisance. Given the
wrong, and the apparent impossibility of righting
it without running risks of a serious nature, some
moral alleviation may be found in the behef that
the victim had brought its misfortunes on its own
head by its own sins. That theory, too, had been
advanced about Poland (as if other nations had
known nothing of sin and folly), and it made some
way in the world at different times, simply because
good care was taken by the interested parties to
stop the mouth of the accused. But it has never
carried much conviction to honest minds. Some-
how, in defiance of the cynical point of view as
to the Force of Lies and against all the power
of falsified evidence, truth often turns out to be
stronger than calumny. With the course of years,
however, another danger sprang up, a danger arising
naturally from the new political alliances dividing
Europe into two armed camps. It was the danger
of silence. Almost without exception the Press of
Western Europe in the twentieth century refused
to touch the PoHsh question in any shape or form
whatever. Never was the fact of PoHsh vitaHty
more embarrassing to European diplomacy than
on the eve of Poland's resurrection.

When the war broke out there was something
gruesomely comic in the proclamations of emperors
and archdukes appealing to that invincible soul
of a nation whose existence or moral worth they

CRIME OF PARTITION 163

had been so arrogantly denying for more than a
century. Perhaps in the whole record of human
transactions there have never been performances
so brazen and so vile as the manifestoes of the
German Emperor and the Grand Duke Nicholas of
Russia; and, I imagine, no more bitter insult has
been offered to human heart and intelhgence than
the way in which those proclamations were flung
into the face of historical truth. It was like a scene
in a cynical and sinister farce, the absurdity of
which became in some sort unfathomable by the
reflection that nobody in the world could possibly
be so abjectly stupid as to be deceived for a single
moment. At that time, and for the first two months
of the war, I happened to be in Poland, and I re-
member perfectly well that, when those precious
documents came out, the confidence in the moral
turpitude of mankind they implied did not even
raise a scornful smile on the lips of men whose
most sacred feeHngs and dignity they outraged.
They did not deign to waste their contempt on
them. In fact, the situation was too poignant and
too involved for either hot scorn or a coldly
rational discussion. For the Poles it was hke
being in a burning house of which all the issues
were locked. There was nothing but sheer anguish
under the strange, as if stony, calmness which in
the utter absence of all hope falls on minds that
are not constitutionally prone to despair. Yet in

i64 CRIME OF PARTITION

this time of dismay the irrepressible vitaHty of
the nation would not accept a neutral attitude. I
was told that even if there were no issue it was
absolutely necessary for the Poles to affirm their
national existence. Passivity, which could be re-
garded as a craven acceptance of all the material
and moral horrors ready to fall upon the nation,
was not to be thought of for a moment. There-
fore, it was explained to me, the Poles must act.
Whether this was a counsel of wisdom or not it is
very difficult to say, but there are crises of the
soul which are beyond the reach of wisdom. When
there is apparently no issue visible to the eyes of
reason, sentiment may yet find a way out, either
towards salvation or to utter perdition, no one
can tell — and the sentiment does not even ask the
question. Being there as a stranger in that tense
atmosphere, which was yet not unfamiHar to me,
I was not very anxious to parade my wisdom,
especially after it had been pointed out in answer
to my cautious arguments that, if life has its
values worth fighting for, death, too, has that in
it which can make it worthy or unworthy.

Out of the mental and moral trouble into which
the grouping of the Powers at the beginning of
war had thrown the counsels of Poland there
emerged at last the decision that the Polish
Legions, a peace organisation in GaHcia directed
by Pilsudski (afterwards given the rank of General,

CRIME OF PARTITION 165

and now apparently the Chief of the Government
in Warsaw), should take the field against the
Russians. In reahty it did not matter against
which partner in the " Crime " PoHsh resentment
should be directed. There was httle to choose
between the methods of Russian barbarism, which
were both crude and rotten, and the cultivated
brutaHty tinged with contempt of Germany's super-
ficial, grinding civiHsation. There was nothing to
choose between them. Both were hateful, and
the direction of the Polish effort was naturally
governed by Austria's tolerant attitude, which had
connived for years at the semi-secret organisation
of the PoHsh Legions. Besides, the material possi-
bility pointed out the way. That Poland should
have turned at first against the ally of Western
Powers, to whose moral support she had been
looking for so many years, is not a greater mon-
strosity than that alliance with Russia which had
been entered into by England and France with
rather less excuse and with a view to eventualities
which could perhaps have been avoided by a firmer
pohcy and by a greater resolution in the face of
what plainly appeared unavoidable.

For let the truth be spoken. The action of
Germany, however cruel, sanguinary, and faith-
less, was nothing in the nature of a stab in the
dark. The Germanic Tribes had told the whole world
in all possible tones carrying conviction, the gently

i66 CRIME OF PARTITION

persuasive, the coldly logical; in tones Hegelian,
Nietzschean, war-like, pious, cynical, inspired,
what they were going to do to the inferior races
of the earth, so full of sin and all unworthiness.
But with a strange similarity to the prophets of
old (who were also great morahsts and invokers
of might) they seemed to be crying in a desert.
Whatever might have been the secret searching of
hearts, the Worthless Ones would not take heed.
It must also be admitted that the conduct of the
menaced Governments carried with it no sugges-
tion of resistance. It was no doubt, the effect of
neither courage nor fear, but of that prudence
which causes the average man to stand very still
in the presence of a savage dog. It was not a very
poHtic attitude, and the more reprehensible in so far
, that it seemed to arise from the mistrust of their own
people's fortitude. On simple matters of life and
death a people is always better than its leaders,
because a people cannot argue itself as a whole
into a sophisticated state of mind out of deference
for a mere doctrine or from an exaggerated sense
of its own cleverness. I am speaking now of
democracies whose chiefs resemble the tyrant of
Syracuse in this, that their power is unhmited
(for who can limit the will of a voting people ?)
and who always see the domestic sword hanging
by a hair above their heads.

Perhaps a different attitude would have checked

CRIME OF PARTITION 167

German self-confidence, and her overgrown mili-
tarism would have died from the excess of its own
strength. What would have been then the moral
state of Europe it is difficult to say. Some other
excess would probably have taken its place, excess
of theory, or excess of sentiment, or an excess of
the sense of security leading to some other form of
catastrophe; but it is certain that in that case the
PoHsh question would not have taken a concrete
form for ages. Perhaps it would never have taken
form ! In this world, where everything is transient,
even the most reproachful ghosts end by vanishing
out of old mansions, out of men's consciences.
Progress of enlightenment, or decay of faith? In
the years before the war the PoHsh ghost was
becoming so thin that it was impossible to get for
it the slightest mention in the papers. A young
Pole coming to me from Paris was extremely in-
dignant, but I, indulging in that detachment which
is the product of greater age, longer experience, and
a habit of meditation, refused to share that senti-
ment. He had gone begging for a word on Poland
to many influential people, and they had one and
all told him that they were going to do no such
thing. They were all men of ideas and therefore
might have been called idealists, but the notion
most strongly anchored in their minds was the
folly of touching a question which certainly had
no merit of actuahty and would have had the

i68 CRIME OF PARTITION

appalling effect of provoking the wrath of their old
enemies and at the same time offending the sensi-
bilities of their new friends. It was an unanswer-
able argument. I couldn't share my young friend's
surprise and indignation. My practice of reflection
had also convinced me that there is nothing on
earth that turns quicker on its pivot than pohtical
ideahsm when touched by the breath of practical
poHtics.

It would be good to remember that Polish in-
dependence as embodied in a PoHsh State is not
the gift of any kind of journahsm, neither is it
the outcome even of some particularly benevolent
idea or of any clearly apprehended sense of guilt.
I am speaking of what I know when I say that the
original and only formative idea in Europe was
the idea of deHvering the fate of Poland into the
hands of Russian Tsarism. And, let us remember,
it was assumed then to be a victorious Tsarism at
that. It was an idea talked of openly, entertained
seriously, presented as a benevolence, with a curious
bhndness to its grotesque and ghastly character. It
was the idea of deHvering the victim with a kindly
smile and the confident assurance that " it would
be all right " to a perfectly unrepentant assassin,
who, after sawing furiously at its throat for a
hundred years or so, was expected to make friends
suddenly and kiss it on both cheeks in the mystic
Russian fashion. It was a singularly nightmarish

CRIME OF PARTITION 169

combination of international polity, and no whisper
of any other would have been officially tolerated.
Indeed, I do not think in the whole extent of
Western Europe there was anybody who had the
slightest mind to whisper on that subject. Those
were the days of the dark future, when Bencken-
dorf put down his name on the Committee for the
Relief of Polish Populations driven by the Russian
armies into the heart of Russia, when the Grand
Duke Nicholas (the gentleman who advocated a
St. Bartholomew's Night for the suppression of
Russian liberalism) was displaying his '' divine "
(I have read the very word in an English news-
paper of standing) strategy in the great retreat,
where Mr. Iswolsky carried himself haughtily on the
banks of the Seine; and it was beginning to dawn
upon certain people there that he was a greater
nuisance even than the Polish question.

But there is no use in talking about all that.
Some clever person has said that it is always the
unexpected that happens, and on a calm and dis-
passionate survey the world does appear mainly
to one as a scene of miracles. Out of Germany's
strength, in whose purpose so many people refused
to believe, came Poland's opportunity, in which
nobody could have been expected to believe. Out
of Russia's collapse emerged that forbidden thing,
the Polish independence, not as a vengeful figure,
the retributive shadow of the crime, but as

170 CRIME OF PARTITION

something much more soHd and more difficult to
get rid of — a political necessity and a moral solu-
tion. Directly it appeared its practical usefulness
became undeniable, and also the fact that, for better
or worse, it was impossible to get rid of it again
except by the unthinkable way of another carving,
of another partition, of another crime.

Therein he the strength and the future of the
thing so strictly forbidden no farther back than
two years or so, of the Polish independence ex-
pressed in a Pohsh State. It comes into the world
morally free, not in virtue of its sufferings, but in
virtue of its miraculous rebirth and of its ancient
claim for services rendered to Europe. Not a
single one of the combatants of all the fronts of
the world has died consciously for Poland's free-
dom. That supreme opportunity was denied even
to Poland's own children. And it is just as well!
Providence in its inscrutable way had been merciful,
for had it been otherwise the load of gratitude
would have been too great, the sense of obhgation
too crushing, the joy of deliverance too fearful
for mortals, common sinners with the rest of man-
kind before the eye of the Most High. Those who
died East and West, leaving so much anguish and
so much pride behind them, died neither for the
creation of States, nor for empty words, nor yet for
the salvation of general ideas. They died neither
for democracy, nor leagues, nor systems, nor yet

CRIME OF PARTITION 171

for abstract justice, which is an unfathomable
mystery. They died for something too deep for
words, too mighty for the common standards by
which reason measures the advantages of Hfe and
death, too sacred for the vain discourses that come
and go on the Hps of dreamers, fanatics, humani-
tarians, and statesmen. They died ....

Poland's independence springs up from that great
immolation, but Poland's loyalty to Europe will not
be rooted in anything so trenchant and burden-
some as the sense of an immeasurable indebtedness,
of that gratitude which in a worldly sense is some-
times called eternal, but which Hes always at the
mercy of weariness and is fatally condemned by
the instabihty of human sentiments to end in
negation. Pohsh loyalty will be rooted in some-
thing much more solid and enduring, in something
that could never be called eternal, but which is,
in fact, life-enduring. It will be rooted in the
national temperament, which is about the only
thing on earth that can be trusted. Men may
deteriorate, they may improve too, but they don't
change. Misfortune is a hard school which may
either mature or spoil a national character, but it
may be reasonably advanced that the long course
of adversity of the most cruel kind has not in-
jured the fundamental characteristics of the PoHsh
nation which has proved its vitality against the
most demorahsing odds. The various phases of

172 CRIME OF PARTITION

the Polish sense of self-preservation struggling
amongst the menacing forces and the no less
threatening chaos of the neighbouring Powers
should be judged impartially. I suggest impar-
tiality and not indulgence simply because, when
appraising the Polish question, it is not necessary
to invoke the softer emotions. A Httle calm reflec-
tion on the past and the present is all that is
necessary on the part of the Western world to
judge the movements of a community whose ideals
are the same, but whose situation is unique. This
situation was brought vividly home to me in the
course of an argument more than eighteen months
ago. " Don't forget," I was told, " that Poland has
"got to Hve in contact with Germany and Russia
" to the end of time. Do you understand the force of
" that expression : ' To the end of time ' .? Facts must
" be taken into account, and especially appalling
" facts, such as this, to which there is no possible
" remedy on earth. For reasons which are, properly
"speaking, physiological, a prospect of friendship
" with Germans or Russians even in the most distant
" future is unthinkable. Any alliance of heart and
" mind would be a monstrous thing, and monsters,
" as we all know, cannot live. You can't base your
" conduct on a monstrous conception. We are either
"worth or not worth preserving, but the horrible
"psychology of the situation is enough to drive
"the national mind to distraction. Yet under a

CRIME OF PARTITION 173

" destructive pressure, of which Western Europe
" can have no notion, appHed by forces that were
" not only crushing but corrupting, we have pre-
" served our sanity. Therefore there can be no fear of
" our losing our minds simply because the pressure
" is removed. We have neither lost our heads nor
" yet our moral sense. Oppression, not merely poli-
" tical, but affecting social relations, family Hfe, the
" deepest affections of human nature, and the very
'^ fount of natural emotions, has never made us
" vengeful. It is worthy of notice that with every
"incentive present in our emotional reactions we
" had no recourse to political assassination. Arms
" in hand, hopeless or hopefully, and always against
"immeasurable odds, we did affirm ourselves and
" the justice of our cause; but wild justice has never
" been a part of our conception of national manli-
" ness. In all the history of Polish oppression there
" was only one shot fired which was not in battle.
" Only one! And the man who fired it in Paris at
" the Emperor Alexander II. was but an individual
" connected with no organisation, representing no
" shade of Polish opinion. The only effect in Poland
"was that of profound regret, not at the failure,
" but at the mere fact of the attempt. The history
" of our captivity is free from that stain; and what-
" ever follies in the eyes of the world we may have
" perpetrated, we have neither murdered our ene-
" mies nor acted treacherously against them, nor

174 CRIME OF PARTITION

" yet have been reduced to the point of cursing
" each other."

I could not gainsay the truth of that discourse,
I saw as clearly as my interlocutor the impossi-
biHty of the faintest sympathetic bond between
Poland and her neighbours ever being formed in
the future. The only course that remains to a
reconstituted Poland is the elaboration, estabHsh-
ment, and preservation of the most correct method
of poHtical relations with neighbours to whom
Poland's existence is bound to be a humiliation
and an offence. Calmly considered it is an appalling
task, yet one may put one's trust in that national
temperament which is so completely free from
aggressiveness and revenge. Therein lie the
foundations of all hope. The success of renewed
life for that nation whose fate is to remain in
exile, ever isolated from the West, amongst hostile
surroundings, depends on the sympathetic under-
standing of its problems by its distant friends,
the Western Powers, which in their democratic
development must recognise the moral and intel-
lectual kinship of that distant outpost of their
own type of civilisation, which was the only basis
of PoHsh culture.

Whatever may be the future of Russia and the
final organisation of Germany, the old hostility
must remain unappeased, the fundamental an-
tagonism must endure for years to come. The

CRIME OF PARTITION 175

Crime of the Partition was committed by auto-
cratic Governments which were the Governments
of their time; but those Governments were char-
acterised in the past, as they will be in the future,
by their people's national traits, which remain
utterly incompatible with the Pohsh mentahty and
PoHsh sentiment. Both the German submissive-
ness (idealistic as it may be) and the Russian
lawlessness (fed on the corruption of all the virtues)
are utterly foreign to the PoHsh nation, whose
qualities and defects are altogether of another
kind, tending to a certain exaggeration of indivi-
duaHsm and, perhaps, to an extreme behef in the
Governing Power of Free Assent : the one invariably
vital principle in the internal government of the
Old Republic. There was never a history more
free from poHtical bloodshed than the history of
the PoHsh State, which never knew either feudal
institutions or feudal quarrels. At the time when
heads were falling on the scaffolds all over Europe
there was only one poHtical execution in Poland
— only one; and as to that there still exists a
tradition that the great ChanceUor who democ-
ratised PoHsh institutions, and had to order it
in pursuance of his poHtical purpose, could not
settle that matter with his conscience tiU the day
of his death. Poland, too, had her civil wars, but
this can hardly be made a matter of reproach
to her by the rest of the world. Conducted

176 CRIME OF PARTITION

with humanity, they left behind them no ani-
mosities and no sense of repression, and certainly
no legacy of hatred. They were but a recognised
argument in political discussion and tended always
towards conciliation.

I cannot imagine, whatever form of demo-
cratic government Poland elaborates for itself,
that either the nation or its leaders would do
anything but welcome the closest scrutiny of
their renewed political existence. The difficulty
of the problem of that existence will be so great
that some errors will be unavoidable, and one may
be sure that they will be taken advantage of by
its neighbours to discredit that hving witness to a
great historical crime. If not the actual frontiers,
then the moral integrity of the new State is sure
to be assailed before the eyes of Europe. Econom-
ical enmity will also come into play when the
world's work is resumed again and competition
asserts its power. Charges of aggression are certain
to be made, especially as related to the small States
formed of the territories of the Old RepubHc. And
everybody knows the power of Hes which go about
clothed in coats of many colours, whereas, as is
well known, Truth has no such advantage, and for
that reason is often suppressed as not altogether
proper for everyday purposes. It is not often
recognised, because it is not always fit to be seen.

Already there are innuendoes, threats, hints

CRIME OF PARTITION 177

thrown out, and even awful instances fabricated
out of inadequate materials, but it is historically
unthinkable that the Poland of the future, with
its sacred tradition of freedom and its hereditary
sense of respect for the rights of individuals and
States, should seek its prosperity in aggressive
action or in moral violence against that part of
its once fellow-citizens who are Ruthenians or
Lithuanians. The only influence that cannot be
restrained is simply the influence of time, which
disengages truth from all facts with a merciless
logic and prevails over the passing opinions, the
changing impulses of men. There can be no doubt
that the moral impulses and the material interests of
the new nationahties, which seem to play now the
game of disintegration for the benefit of the world's
enemies, will in the end bring them nearer to the
Poland of this war's creation, will unite them
sooner or later by a spontaneous movement
towards the State which had adopted and brought
them up in the development of its own humane
culture — the offspring of the West.

A NOTE ON THE POLISH
PROBLEM

1916

We must start from the assumption that promises
made by proclamation at the beginning of this war
may be binding on the individuals who made them
under the stress of coming events, but cannot be
regarded as binding the Governments after the
end of the war.

Poland has been presented with three pro-
clamations. Two of them were in such contrast
with the avowed principles and the historic action
for the last hundred years (since the Congress of
Vienna) of the Powers concerned, that they were
more like cynical insults to the nation's deepest
feelings, its memory and its intelligence, than state
papers of a conciliatory nature.

The German promises awoke nothing but indig-
nant contempt; the Russian a bitter incredulity of
the most complete kind. The Austrian proclama-
tion, which made no promises and contented itself
with pointing out the Austro-Polish relations for
the last forty-five years, was received in silence.
For it is a fact that in Austrian Poland alone
Polish nationality was recognised as an element

179

i8o NOTE ON POLISH PROBLEM

of the Empire, and individuals could breathe the
air of freedom, of civil life, if not of political
independence.

But for Poles to be Germanophile is unthink-
able. To be Russophile or Austrophile is at best a
counsel of despair in view of a European situation
which, because of the grouping of the powers,
seems to shut from them every hope, expressed or
unexpressed, of a national future nursed through
more than a hundred years of suffering and
oppression.

Through most of these years, and especially since
1830, Poland (I use this expression since Poland
exists as a spiritual entity to-day as definitely as it
ever existed in her past) has put her faith in the
Western Powers. Politically it may have been
nothing more than a consoHng illusion, and the
nation had a half-consciousness of this. But what
Poland was looking for from the Western Powers
without discouragement and with unbroken con-
fidence was moral support.

This is a fact of the sentimental order. But such
facts have their positive value, for their idealism
derives from perhaps the highest kind of reality.
A sentiment asserts its claim by its force, persist-
ence and universaHty. In Poland that sentimental
attitude towards the Western Powers is universal.
It extends to all classes. The very children are
affected by it as soon as they begin to think.

NOTE ON POLISH PROBLEM i8i

The political value of such a sentiment consists
in this, that it is based on profound resemblances.
Therefore one can build on it as if it were a material
fact. For the same reason it would be unsafe to
disregard it if one proposed to build solidly. The
Poles, whom superficial or ill-informed theorists
arc trying to force into the social and psychological
formula of Slavonism, are in truth not Slavonic at
all. In temperament, in feehng, in mind, and even
in unreason, they are Western, with an absolute
comprehension of all Western modes of thought,
even of those which are remote from their historical
experience.

That element of racial unity which may be
called Polonism, remained compressed between
Prussian Germanism on one side and the Russian
Slavonism on the other. For Germanism it feels
nothing but hatred. But between Polonism and
Slavonism there is not so much hatred as a complete
and ineradicable incompatibihty.

No poHtical work of reconstructing Poland either
as a matter of justice or expediency could be sound
which would leave the new creation in dependence
to Germanism or to Slavonism.

The first need not be considered. The second
must be — unless the Powers elect to drop the
Pohsh question either under the cover of vague
assurances or without any disguise whatever.

But if it is considered it will be seen at once that

i82 NOTE ON POLISH PROBLEM

the Slavonic solution of the PoHsh Question can
offer no guarantees of duration or hold the promise
of security for the peace of Europe.

The only basis for it would be the Grand Duke's
Manifesto. But that Manifesto, signed by a person-
age now removed from Europe to Asia, and by a
man, moreover, who if true to himself, to his con-
ception of patriotism and to his family tradition
could not have put his hand to it with any sincerity
of purpose, is now divested of all authority. The
forcible vagueness of its promises, its starthng in-
consistency with the hundred years of ruthlessly
denationahsing oppression permit one to doubt
whether it was ever meant to have any authority.

But in any case it could have had no effect.
The very nature of things would have brought
to nought its professed intentions.

It is impossible to suppose that a State of
Russia's power and antecedents would tolerate
a privileged community (of, to Russia, unnational
complexion) within the body of the Empire. All
history shows that such an arrangement, however
hedged in by the most solemn treaties and declara-
tions, cannot last. In this case it would lead to a
tragic issue. The absorption of Polonism is un-
thinkable. The last hundred years of European
History proves it undeniably. There remains then
extirpation, a process of blood and iron; and the
last act of the Pohsh drama would be played then

NOTE ON POLISH PROBLEM 183

before a Europe too weary to interfere, and to
the applause of Germany.

It would not be just to say that the disappear-
ance of Polonism would add any strength to the
Slavonic power of expansion. It would add no
strength, but it would remove a possibly effective
barrier against the surprises the future of Europe
may hold in store for the Western Powers.

Thus the question whether Polonism is worth
saving presents itself as a problem of politics with
a practical bearing on the stabiHty of European
peace — as a barrier or perhaps better (in view of
its detached position) as an outpost of the Western
Powers placed between the great might of Slavonism
which has not yet made up its mind to anything,
and the organised Germanism which has spoken its
mind with no uncertain voice, before the world.

Looked at in that hght alone Polonism seems
worth saving. That it has hved so long on its trust in
the moral support of the Western Powers may give
it another and even stronger claim, based on a truth
of a more profound kind. Polonism had resisted
the utmost efforts of Germanism and Slavonism
for more than a hundred years. Why ? Because of
the strength of its ideals conscious of their kin-
ship with the West. Such a power of resistance
creates a moral obhgation which it would be
unsafe to neglect. There is always a risk in
throwing away a tool of proved temper.

i84 NOTE ON POLISH PROBLEM

In this profound conviction of the practical
and ideal worth of Polonism one approaches the
problem of its preservation with a very vivid sense
of the practical difficulties derived from the group-
ing of the Powers. The uncertainty of the extent
and of the actual form of victory for the AlHes wiU
increase the difficulty of formulating a plan of
Polish regeneration at the present moment.

Poland, to strike its roots again into the soil of
poHtical Europe, will require a guarantee of security
for the healthy development and for the untram-
melled play of such institutions as she may be
enabled to give to herself.

Those institutions will be animated by the spirit
of Polonism, which, having been a factor in the
history of Europe and having proved its vitality
under oppression, has estabhshed its right to Hve.
That spirit, despised and hated by Germany and
incompatible with Slavonism because of moral
differences, cannot avoid being (in its renewed
assertion) an object of dislike and mistrust.

As an unavoidable consequence of the past
Poland will have to begin its existence in an atmo-
sphere of enmities and suspicions. That advanced
outpost of Western civihsation will have to hold
its ground in the midst of hostile camps : always
its historical fate.

Against the menace of such a specially dangerous
situation the paper and ink of public Treaties

NOTE ON POLISH PROBLEM 185

cannot be an effective defence. Nothing but the
actual, living, active participation of the two
Western Powers in the estabhshment of the new
PoHsh commonwealth, and in the first twenty years
of its existence, will give the Poles a sufficient
guarantee of security in the work of restoring their
national life.

An Anglo-French protectorate would be the ideal
form of moral and material support. But Russia,
as an ally, must take her place in it on such a foot-
ing as will allay to the fullest extent her possible
apprehensions and satisfy her national senti-
ment. That necessity will have to be formally
recognised.

In reality Russia has ceased to care much for
her Polish possessions. Public recognition of a
mistake in poHtical moraHty and a voluntary sur-
render of territory in the cause of European con-
cord, cannot damage the prestige of a powerful
State. The new spheres of expansion in regions
more easily assimilable, will more than compensate
Russia for the loss of territory on the Western
frontier of the Empire.

The experience of Dual Controls and similar
combinations has been so unfortunate in the past
that the suggestion of a Triple Protectorate may
well appear at first sight monstrous even to un-
prejudiced minds. But it must be remembered
that this is a unique case and a problem altogether

i86 NOTE ON POLISH PROBLEM

exceptional, justifying the employment of excep-
tional means for its solution. To those who would
doubt the possibihty of even bringing such a
scheme into existence the answer may be made
that there are psychological moments when any
measure tending towards the ends of concord and
justice may be brought into being. And it seems
that the end of the war would be the moment for
bringing into being the pohtical scheme advocated
in this note.

Its success must depend on the singleness of
purpose in the contracting Powers, and on the
wisdom, the tact, the abihties, the good-will of
men entrusted with its initiation and its further
control. Finally it may be pointed out that this
plan is the only one offering serious guarantees to
all the parties occupying their respective positions
within the scheme.

If her existence as a state is admitted as just,
expedient and necessary, Poland has the moral
right to receive her constitution not from the hand
of an old enemy, but from the Western Powers
alone, though of course with the fullest concurrence
of Russia.

This constitution, elaborated by a committee
of Poles nominated by the three Governments,
will (after due discussion and amendment by the
High Commissioners of the Protecting Powers) be
presented to Poland as the initial document,

NOTE ON POLISH PROBLEM 187

the charter of her new Hfe, freely offered and
unreservedly accepted.

It should be as simple and short as a written
constitution can be — estabhshing the Pohsh Com-
monwealth, setthng the lines of representative
institutions, the form of Judicature, and leaving
the greatest measure possible of self-government
to the provinces forming part of the re-created
Poland.

This constitution will be promulgated im-
mediately after the three Powers had settled
the frontiers of the new State, including the
town of Danzic (free port) and a proportion of
seaboard. The legislature will then be called
together and a general treaty will regulate Poland's
international portion as a protected state, the
status of the High Commissioners and such-Hke
matters. The legislature will ratify, thus making
Poland, as it were, a party in the estabhshment of
the protectorate. A point of importance.

Other general treaties will define Poland's posi-
tion in the Anglo-Franco-Russian alliance, fix the
numbers of the army, and settle the participation
of the Powers in its organisation and training.

POLAND REVISITED

1915

I

I HAVE never believed in political assassination as

a means to an end, and least of all in assassination

of the dynastic order. I don't know how far murder

can ever approach the perfection of a fine art, but

looked upon with the cold eye of reason it seems

but a crude expedient of impatient hope or hurried

despair. There are few men whose premature death

could influence human affairs more than on the

surface. The deeper stream of causes depends not

on individuals who, like the mass of mankind, are

carried on by a destiny which no murder has ever

been able to placate, divert, or arrest.

In July of last year I was a stranger in a strange

city in the Midlands and particularly out of touch

with the world's politics. Never a very diligent

reader of newspapers, there were at that time

reasons of a private order which caused me to be

even less informed than usual on public affairs as

presented from day to day in that necessarily

atmosphereless, perspectiveless manner of the daily

189

190 POLAND REVISITED

papers, which somehow, for a man possessed of
some historic sense, robs them of all real interest.
I don't think I had looked at a daily for a month
past.

But though a stranger in a strange city I was
not lonely, thanks to a friend who had travelled
there out of pure kindness to bear me company
in a conjuncture which, in a most private sense,
was somewhat trying.

It was this friend who, one morning at break-
fast, informed me of the murder of the Archduke
Ferdinand.

The impression was mediocre. I was barely
aware that such a man existed. I remembered
only that not long before he had visited London.
The recollection was rather of a cloud of insignifi-
cant printed words his presence in this country
provoked.

Various opinions had been expressed of him, but
his importance was Archducal, dynastic, purely
accidental. Can there be in the world of real men
anything more shadowy than an Archduke ? And
now he was no more; removed with an atrocity
of circumstances which made one more sensible
of his humanity than when he was in hfe. I con-
nected that crime with Balkanic plots and aspira-
tions so little that I had actually to ask where
it had happened. My friend told me it was in
Serajevo, and wondered what would be the con-

POLAND REVISITED 191

sequences of that grave event. He asked me what
I thought would happen next.

It was with perfect sincerity that I answered
" Nothing," and having a great repugnance to
consider murder as a factor of pohtics, I dismissed
the subject. It fitted with my ethical sense that • ■^
an act cruel and absurd should be also useless. I
had also the vision of a crowd of shadowy Arch-
dukes in the background, out of which one would
step forward to take the place of that dead man
in the light of the European stage. And then, to
speak the whole truth, there was no man capable
of forming a judgment who attended so little to
the march of events as I did at that time. What
for want of a more definite term I must call my
mind was fixed upon my own affairs, not because
they were in a bad posture, but because of their
fascinating holiday-promising aspect. I had been
obtaining my information as to Europe at second
hand, from friends good enough to come down now
and then to see us. They arrived with their pockets
full of crumpled newspapers, and answered my
queries casually, with gentle smiles of scepticism
as to the reahty of my interest. And yet I was not
indifferent; but the tension in the Balkans had
become chronic after the acute crisis, ^and one
could not help being less conscious of it. It had
wearied out one's attention. Who could have
guessed that on that wild stage we had just been

192 POLAND REVISITED

looking at a miniature rehearsal of the great world-
drama, the reduced model of the very passions
and violences of what the future held in store for
the Powers of the Old World? Here and there,
perhaps, rare minds had a suspicion of that
possibiHty, while they watched Old Europe stage-
managing fussily by means of notes and confer-
ences, the prophetic reproduction of its awaiting
fate. It was wonderfully exact in the spirit; same
roar of guns, same protestations of superiority,
same words in the air; race, hberation, justice —
and the same mood of trivial demonstrations. One
could not take to-day a ticket for Petersburg.
" You mean Petrograd," would say the booking
clerk. Shortly after the fall of Adrianople a friend
of mine passing through Sophia asked for some cafe
turc at the end of his lunch.

** Monsieur veut dire Cafe balkanique," the
patriotic waiter corrected him austerely.

I will not say that I had not observed some-
thing of that instructive aspect of the war of the
Balkans both in its first and in its second phase.
But those with whom I touched upon that vision
were pleased to see in it the evidence of my alarmist
cynicism. As to alarm, I pointed out that fear is
natural to man, and even salutary. It has done as
much as courage for the preservation of races and
institutions. But from a charge of cynicism I have
always shrunk instinctively. It is like a charge of

POLAND REVISITED 193

being blind in one eye, a moral disablement, a sort
of disgraceful calamity that must be carried off
with a jaunty bearing — a sort of thing I am
not capable of. Rather than be thought a mere
jaunty cripple I allowed myself to be bHnded by
the gross obviousness of the usual arguments. It
was pointed out to me that these Eastern nations
were not far removed from a savage state. Their
economics were yet at the stage of scratching the
earth and feeding the pigs. The highly-developed
material civihsation of Europe could not allow
itself to be disturbed by a war. The industry and
the finance could not allow themselves to be dis-
organised by the ambitions of an idle class, or even
the aspirations, whatever they might be, of the
masses.

Very plausible all this sounded. War does not
pay. There had been a book written on that
theme — an attempt to put pacificism on a material
basis. Nothing more solid in the way of argument
could have been advanced on this trading and
manufacturing globe. War was "bad business! "
This was final.

But, truth to say, on this July day I reflected
but Httle on the condition of the civihsed world.
Whatever sinister passions were heaving under its
splendid and complex surface, I was too agitated
by a simple and innocent desire of my own, to
notice the signs or interpret them correctly. The

194 POLAND REVISITED

most innocent of passions will take the edge off
one's judgment. The desire which possessed me
was simply the desire to travel. And that being so
it would have taken something very plain in the
way of symptoms to shake my simple trust in the
stability of things on the Continent. My sentiment
and not my reason was engaged there. My eyes
were turned to the past, not to the future; the past
that one cannot suspect and mistrust, the shadowy
and unquestionable moral possession the darkest
struggles of which wear a halo of glory and peace.

In the preceding month of May we had received
an invitation to spend some weeks in Poland in a
country house in the neighbourhood of Cracow,
but within the Russian frontier. The enterprise at
first seemed to me considerable. Since leaving the
sea, to which I have been faithful for so many
years, I have discovered that there is in my com-
position very little stuff from which travellers are
made. I confess that my first impulse about a
projected journey is to leave it alone. But the
invitation received at first with a sort of dismay
ended by rousing the dormant energy of my feel-
ings. Cracow is the town where I spent with my
father the last eighteen months of his Hfe. It
was in that old royal and academical city that I
ceased to be a child, became a boy, had known
the friendships, the admirations, the thoughts and
the indignations of that age. It was within those

POLAND REVISITED 195

historical walls that I began to understand things,
form affections, lay up a store of memories and a
fund of sensations with which I was to break
violently by throwing myself into an unrelated
existence. It was like the experience of another
world. The wings of time made a great dusk over
all this, and I feared at first that if I ventured
bodily in there I would discover that I who have
had to do with a good many imaginary lives have
been embracing mere shadows in my youth. I
feared. But fear in itself may become a fascina-
tion. Men have gone, alone and trembHng, into
graveyards at midnight — ^just to see what would
happen. And this adventure was to be pursued
in sunshine. Neither would it be pursued alone.
The invitation was extended to us all. This journey
would have something of a migratory character,
the invasion of a tribe. My present, all that gave
solidity and value to it, at any rate, would stand
by me in this test of the reahty of my past. I was
pleased with the idea of showing my companions
what PoHsh country Hfe was Hke ; to visit the town
where I was at school before the boys by my side
should grow too old, and gaining an individual past
of their own, should lose their unsophisticated
interest in mine. It is only in the short instants of
early youth that we have the faculty of coming out
of ourselves to see dimly the visions and share the
emotions of another soul. For youth aU is reality

/

196 POLAND REVISITED

in this world, and with justice, since it apprehends
so vividly its images behind which a longer life
makes one doubt whether there is any substance.
I trusted to the fresh receptivity of these young
beings in whom, unless Heredity is an empty word,
there should have been a fibre which would answer
to the sight, to the atmosphere, to the memories
of that corner of the earth where my own boyhood
had received its earliest independent impressions.

The first days of the third week in July, while
the telegraph wires hummed with the words of
enormous import which were to fill blue books,
yellow books, white books, and to arouse the
wonder of mankind, passed for us in light-hearted
preparations for the journey. What was it but
just a rush through Germany, to get across as
quickly as possible ?

Germany is the part of the earth's soHd surface
of which I know the least. In all my life I had
been across it only twice. I may well say of it vidi
tantum ; and the very little I saw was through the
window of a railway carriage at express speed.
Those journeys of mine had been more like pil-
grimages when one hurries on towards the goal for
the satisfaction of a deeper need than curiosity.
In this last instance, too, I was so incurious that
I would have liked to have fallen asleep on the
shores of England and opened my eyes, if it were
possible, only on the other side of the Silesian

POLAND REVISITED 197

frontier. Yet, in truth, as many others have done,
I had " sensed it " — that promised land of steel,
of chemical dyes, of method, of efficiency; that
race planted in the middle of Europe, assuming
in grotesque vanity the attitude of Europeans
amongst effete Asiatics or barbarous niggers; and,
with a consciousness of superiority freeing their
hands from all moral bonds, anxious to take up,
if I may express myself so, the "perfect man's
burden." Meantime, in a clearing of the Teutonic
forest, their sages were rearing a Tree of Cynical
Wisdom, a sort of Upas tree, whose shade may be
seen now lying over the prostrate body of Belgium.
It must be said that they laboured openly enough,
watering it with the most authentic sources of all
madness, and watching with their be-spectacled
eyes the slow ripening of the glorious blood-red
fruit. The sincerest words of peace, words of
menace, and I verily believe words of abasement,
even if there had been a voice vile enough to utter
them, would have been wasted on their ecstasy.
For when the fruit ripens on a branch it must fall.
There is nothing on earth that can prevent it.

II

For reasons which at first seemed to me somewhat
obscure, that one of my companions whose wishes
are law decided that our travels should begin in an

198 POLAND REVISITED

unusual way by the crossing of the North Sea. We
should proceed from Harwich to Hamburg. Besides
being thirty-six times longer than the Dover-Calais
passage this rather unusual route had an air of ad-
venture in better keeping with the romantic feeHng
of this PoHsh journey which for so many years had
been before us in a state of a project full of colour
and promise, but always retreating, elusive hke an
enticing mirage.

And, after all, it had turned out to be no mirage.
No wonder they were excited. It's no mean experi-
ence to lay your hands on a mirage. The day of
departure had come, the very hour had struck.
The luggage was coming downstairs. It was most
convincing. Poland then, if erased from the map,
yet existed in reality; it was not a mere pays du
reve^ where you can travel only in imagination. For
no man, they argued, not even father, an habitual
pursuer of dreams, would push the love of the
novelist's art of make-believe to the point of bur-
dening himself with real trunks for a voyage au
'pays du rive.

As we left the door of our house, nesthng in,
perhaps, the most peaceful nook in Kent, the sky,
after weeks of perfectly brazen serenity, veiled its
blue depths and started to weep fine tears for the
refreshment of the parched fields. A pearly blur
settled over them, and a light sifted of all glare, of
everything unkindly and searching that dwells in

POLAND REVISITED 199

the splendour of unveiled skies. All unconscious
of going towards the very scenes of war, I carried
off in my eye, this tiny fragment of Great Britain;
a few fields, a wooded rise; a clump of trees or
two, with a short stretch of road, and here and
there a gleam of red wall and tiled roof above the
darkening hedges wrapped up in soft mist and
peace. And I felt that all this had a very strong
hold on me as the embodiment of a beneficent and
gentle spirit; that it was dear to me not as an in-
heritance, but as an acquisition, as a conquest in
the sense in which a woman is conquered — by love,
which is a sort of surrender.

These were strange, as if disproportionate
thoughts to the matter in hand, which was the
simplest sort of a Continental holiday. And I
am certain that my companions, near as they
are to me, felt no other trouble but the suppressed
excitement of pleasurable anticipation. The forms
and the spirit of the land before their eyes were
their inheritance, not their conquest— which is a
thing precarious, and, therefore, the most precious,
possessing you if only by the fear of unworthiness
rather than possessed by you. Moreover, as we
sat together in the same railway carriage, they
were looking forward to a voyage in space, whereas
I felt more and more plainly, that what I had
started on was a journey in time, into the past;
a fearful enough prospect for the most consistent.

200 POLAND REVISITED

but to him who had not known how to preserve
against his impulses the order and continuity of
his Hfe — so that at times it presented itself to his
conscience as a series of betrayals — still more
dreadful.

I put down here these thoughts so exclusively
personal, to explain why there was no room in my
consciousness for the apprehension of a European
war. I don't mean to say that I ignored the
possibility; I simply did not think of it. And it
made no difference; for if I had thought of it, it
could only have been in the lame and inconclusive
way of the common uninitiated mortals; and I
am sure that nothing short of intellectual certi-
tude— obviously unattainable by the man in the
street — could have stayed me on that journey
which now that I had started on it seemed an
irrevocable thing, a necessity of my self-respect.

London, the London before the war, flaunting
its enormous glare, as of a monstrous conflagration
up into the black sky — ^with its best Venice-Hke
aspect of rainy evenings, the wet asphalted streets
lying with the sheen of sleeping water in winding
canals, and the great houses of the city towering
all dark, hke empty palaces, above the reflected
Hghts of the glistening roadway.

Everything in the subdued incomplete night-life
around the Mansion House went on normally with
its fascinating air of a dead commercial city of

POLAND REVISITED 201

sombre walls through which the inextinguishable
activity of its millions streamed East and West in
a briUiant flow of lighted vehicles.

In Liverpool Street, as usual too, through the
double gates, a continuous hne of taxi-cabs ghded
down the incHned approach and up again, Hke an
endless chain of dredger-buckets, pouring in the
passengers, and dipping them out of the great
railway station under the inexorable paUid face
of the clock telling off the diminishing minutes of
peace. It was the hour of the boat-trains to Hol-
land, to Hamburg, and there seemed to be no lack
of people, fearless, reckless, or ignorant, who
wanted to go to these places. The station was
normally crowded, and if there was a great flutter
of evening papers in the multitude of hands, there
were no signs of extraordinary emotion on that
multitude of faces. There was nothing in them to
distract me from the thought that it was singu-
larly appropriate that I should start from this
station on the retraced way of my existence. For
this was the station at which, thirty-seven years
before, I arrived on my first visit to London. Not
the same building, but the same spot. At nineteen
years of age, after a period of probation and train-
ing I had imposed upon myself as ordinary seaman
on board a North Sea coaster, I had come up from
Lowestoft — my first long railway journey in Eng-
land— to '* sign on " for an Antipodean voyage in

202 POLAND REVISITED

a deep-water ship. Straight from a railway carriage
I had walked into the great city with something of
the feehng of a traveller penetrating into a vast
and unexplored wilderness. No explorer could
have been more lonely. I did not know a single
soul of all these millions that all around me peopled
the mysterious distances of the streets. I cannot
say I was free from a little youthful awe, but at
that age one's feelings are simple. I was elated. I
was pursuing a clear aim, I was carrying out a
deliberate plan of making out of myself, in the
first place, a seaman worthy of the service, good
enough to work by the side of the men with whom
I was to live; and in the second place, I had to
justify my existence to myself, to redeem a tacit
moral pledge. Both these aims were to be attained
by the same effort. How simple seemed the
problem of life then, on that hazy day of early
September in the year 1878, when I entered
London for the first time.

From that point of view — Youth and a straight-
forward scheme of conduct — it was certainly a
year of grace. All the help I had to get in touch
with the world I was invading was a piece of paper
not much bigger than the palm of my hand — in
which I held it — torn out of a larger plan of London
for the greater facility of reference. It had been
the object of careful study for some days past.
The fact that I could take a conveyance at the

POLAND REVISITED 203

station never occurred to my mind, no, not even
when I got out into the street, and stood, taking
my anxious bearings, in the midst, so to speak, of
twenty thousand hansoms. A strange absence of
mind or unconscious conviction that one cannot
approach an important moment of one's hfe by
means of a hired carriage ? Yes, it would have
been a preposterous proceeding. And indeed I
was to make an AustraHan voyage and encircle
the globe before ever entering a London hansom.

Another document, a cutting from a newspaper,
containing the address of an obscure shipping agent,
was in my pocket. And I needed not to take it out.
That address was as if graven deep in my brain.
I muttered its words to myself as I walked on,
navigating the sea of London by the chart con-
cealed in the palm of my hand; for I had vowed to
myself not to inquire my way from anyone. Youth
is the time of rash pledges. Had I taken a wrong
turning I would have been lost; and if faithful to
my pledge I might have remained lost for days, for
weeks, have left perhaps my bones to be discovered
bleaching in some blind alley of the Whitechapel
district, as it had happened to lonely travellers
lost in the bush. But I walked on to my destina-
tion without hesitation or mistake, showing there,
for the first time, some of that faculty to absorb
and make my own the imaged topography of
a chart, which in later years was to help me in

204

POLAND REVISITED

regions of intricate navigation to keep the ships
entrusted to me off the ground. The place I
was bound to was not easy to find. It was one
of those courts hidden away from the charted and
navigable streets, lost among the thick growth of
houses Hke a dark pool in the depths of a forest,
approached by an inconspicuous archway as if by
a secret path; a Dickensian nook of London, that
wonder city, the growth of which bears no sign of
intelligent design, but many traces of freakishly
sombre phantasy the Great Master knew so well
how to bring out by the magic of his understanding
love. And the office I entered was Dickensian too.
The dust of the Waterloo year lay on the panes
and frames of its windows; early Georgian grime
clung to its sombre wainscoting.

It was one o'clock in the afternoon, but the day
was gloomy. By the light of a single gas-jet de-
pending from the smoked ceiling I saw an elderly
man, in a long coat of black broadcloth. He had
a grey beard, a big nose, thick Hps, and heavy
shoulders. His curly white hair and the general
character of his head recalled vaguely a burly
apostle in the harocco style of Italian art. Standing
up at a tall, shabby, slanting desk, his silver-
rimmed spectacles pushed up high on his fore-
head, he was eating a mutton-chop, which had
been just brought to him from some Dickensian
eating-house round the corner.

POLAND REVISITED 205

Without ceasing to eat he turned to me his
florid, harocco apostle's face with an expression of
inquiry.

I produced elaborately a series of vocal sounds
which must have borne sufficient resemblance to
the phonetics of English speech, for his face broke
into a smile of comprehension almost at once.^ —
" Oh, it's you who wrote a letter to me the other
day from Lowestoft about getting a ship."

I had written to him from Lowestoft. I can't
remember a single word of that letter now. It
was my very first composition in the EngHsh
language. And he had understood it, evidently, for
he spoke to the point at once, explaining that his
business, mainly, was to find good ships for young
gentlemen who wanted to go to sea as premium
apprentices with a view of being trained for officers.
But he gathered that this was not my object. I
did not desire to be apprenticed. Was that the
case ?

It was. He was good enough to say then, " Of
course I see that you are a gentleman. But your
wish is to get a berth before the mast as an Able
Seaman if possible. Is that it ? "

It was certainly my wish; but he stated doubt-
fully that he feared he could not help me much in
this. There was an Act of Parliament which made
it penal to procure ships for sailors. " An Act — of
— Parhament. A law," he took pains to impress it

2o6 POLAND REVISITED

again and again on my foreign understanding,
while I looked at him in consternation.

I had not been half an hour in London before I
had run my head against an Act of Parliament!
What a hopeless adventure! However, the barocco
apostle was a resourceful person in his way, and
we managed to get round the hard letter of it
without damage to its fine spirit. Yet, strictly
speaking, it was not the conduct of a good citizen;
and in retrospect there is an unfihal flavour about
that early sin of mine. For this Act of Parliament,
the Merchant Shipping Act of the Victorian era, had
been in a manner of speaking a father and mother
to me. For many years it had regulated and
disciplined my life, prescribed my food and the
amount of my breathing space, had looked after
my health and tried as much as possible to secure
my personal safety in a risky caUing. It isn't such
a bad thing to lead a life of hard toil and plain duty
within the four corners of an honest Act of Parlia-
ment. And I am glad to say that its severities
have never been apphed to me.

In the year 1878, the year of "Peace with
Honour," I had walked as lone as any human
being in the streets of London, out of Liverpool
Street Station, to surrender myself to its care.
And now, in the year of the war waged for honour
and conscience more than for any other cause, I
was there again, no longer alone, but a man of

POLAND REVISITED 207

infinitely dear and close ties grown since that time, of
work done, of words written, of friendships secured.
It was Hke the closing of a thirty-six-year cycle.

All unaware of the War Angel already awaiting,
with the trumpet at his Hps, the stroke of the fatal
hour, I sat there, thinking that this life of ours is
neither long nor short, but that it can appear very
wonderful, entertaining, and pathetic, with sym-
boHc images and bizarre associations crowded into
one half-hour of retrospective musing.

I felt, too, that this journey, so suddenly en-
tered upon, was bound to take me away from daily
Hfe's actuahties at every step. I felt it more than
ever when presently we steamed out into the North
Sea, on a dark night fitful with gusts of wind, and
I lingered on deck, alone of all the tale of the ship's
passengers. That sea was to me something unfor-
gettable, something much more than a name. It
had been for some time the school-room of my
trade. On it, I may safely say, I had learned, too,
my first words of English. A wild and stormy
abode, sometimes, was that confined, shallow-water
academy of seamanship from which I launched my-
self on the wide oceans. My teachers had been the
sailors of the Norfolk shore; coast men, with steady
eyes, mighty Hmbs, and gentle voice; men of very
few words, which at least w^ere never bare of
meaning. Honest, strong, steady men, sobered by
domestic ties, one and all, as far as I can remember.

2o8 POLAND REVISITED

That is what years ago the North Sea I could
hear growHng in the dark all round the ship had
been for me. And I fancied that I must have been
carrying its voice in my ear ever since, for nothing
could be more familiar than those short, angry
sounds I was listening to with a smile of affec-
tionate recognition.

I could not guess that before many days my
old schoolroom would be desecrated by violence,
Httered with wrecks, with death walking its waves,
hiding under its waters. Perhaps while I am
writing these words the children, or maybe the
grandchildren, of my pacific teachers are out in
trawlers, under the Naval flag, dredging for German
submarine mines.

Ill

I HAVE said that the North Sea was my finishing
school of seamanship before I launched myself on
the wider oceans. Confined as it is in comparison
with the vast stage of this water-girt globe, I did
not know it in all its parts. My class-room was
the region of the English East Coast which, in the
year of Peace with Honour, had long forgotten
the war episodes belonging to its maritime history.
It was a peaceful coast, agricultural, industrial, the
home of fishermen. At night the lights of its many

POLAND REVISITED

209

towns played on the clouds, or in clear weather
lay still, here and there, in brilliant pools above
the ink-black outline of the land. On many a
night I have hauled at the braces under the
shadow of that coast, envying, as sailors will,
the people on shore sleeping quietly in their beds
within sound of the sea. I imagine that not one
head on those envied pillows was made uneasy by
the sHghtest premonition of the realities of naval
war the short lifetime of one generation was to
bring so close to their homes.

Though far away from that region of kindly
memories and traversing a part of the North Sea
much less known to me, I was deeply conscious of
the familiarity of my surroundings. It was a
cloudy, nasty day: and the aspects of Nature
don't change, unless in the course of thousands of
years — or, perhaps, centuries. The Phoenicians,
its first discoverers, the Romans, the first imperial
rulers of that sea, had experienced days like this,
so different in the wintry quahty of the light,
even on a July afternoon, from anything they had
ever known in their native Mediterranean. For
myself, a very late comer into that sea, and its
former pupil, I accorded amused recognition to
the characteristic aspect so well remembered from
my days of training. The same old thing. A grey-
green expanse of smudgy waters grinning angrily

at one with white foam-ridges, and over all a
o

210 POLAND REVISITED

cheerless, unglowing canopy, apparently made of
wet blotting-paper. From time to time a flurry of
fine rain blew along like a puff of smoke across the
dots of distant fishing boats, very few, very scat-
tered, and tossing restlessly on an ever dissolving,
ever re-forming sky-line.

Those flurries, and the steady rolHng of the ship,
accounted for the emptiness of the decks, favouring
my reminiscent mood. It might have been a day of
five and thirty years ago, when there were on this
and every other sea more sails and less smoke-stacks
to be seen. Yet, thanks to the unchangeable
sea I could have given myself up to the illusion
of a revised past, had it not been for the periodical
transit across my gaze of a German passenger. He
was marching round and round the boat deck with
characteristic determination. Two sturdy boys
gambolled round him in his progress like two
disorderly satellites round their parent planet. He
was bringing them home, from their school in
England, for their hoHday. What could have
induced such a sound Teuton to entrust his off-
spring to the unhealthy influences of that effete,
corrupt, rotten and criminal country I cannot
imagine. It could hardly have been from motives
of economy. I did not speak to him. He trod the
deck of that decadent British ship with a scornful
foot while his breast (and to a large extent his
stomach, too) appeared expanded by the conscious-

POLAND REVISITED 211

ness of a superior destiny. Later I could observe
the same truculent bearing, touched with the
racial grotesqueness, in the men of the Landzvehr
corps, that passed through Cracow to reinforce the
Austrian army in Eastern GaHcia. Indeed, the
haughty passenger might very well have been,
most probably was, an officer of the Landzvehr; and
perhaps those two fine active boys are orphans by
now. Thus things acquire significance by the lapse
of time. A citizen, a father, a warrior, a mote in
the dust-cloud of six milHon fighting particles,
an unconsidered trifle for the jaws of war, his
humanity was not consciously impressed on my
mind at the time. Mainly, for me, he * was a
sharp tapping of heels round the corner of the
deck-house, a white yachting cap and a green
overcoat getting periodically between my eyes
and the shifting cloud-horizon of the ashy-grey
North Sea. He was but a shadowy intrusion
and a disregarded one, for, far away there to
the West, in the direction of the Dogger Bank,
where fishermen go seeking their daily bread and
sometimes find their graves, I could behold an
experience of my own in the winter of '81, not of
war, truly, but of a fairly lively contest with the
elements which were very angry indeed.

There had been a troublesome week of it, in-
cluding one hateful night — or a night of hate (it
isn't for nothing that the North Sea is also called

212 POLAND REVISITED

the German Ocean) — when all the fury stored in
its heart seemed concentrated on one ship which
could do no better than float on her side in an
unnatural, disagreeable, precarious, and altogether
intolerable manner. There were on board, besides
myself, seventeen men all good and true, including
a round enormous Dutchman who, in those hours
between sunset and sunrise, managed to lose his
blown-out appearance somehow, became as it were
deflated, and thereafter for a good long time moved
in our midst wrinkled and slack all over like a
half-collapsed balloon. The whimpering of our
deck-boy, a skinny, impressionable little scare-
crow out of a training-ship, for whom, because of
the tender immaturity of his nerves, this display
of German Ocean frightfulness was too much
(before the year was out he developed into a
sufficiently cheeky young ruffian), his desolate
w^himpering, I say, heard between the gusts of
that black, savage night, was much more present
to my mind and indeed to my senses than the green
overcoat and the white cap of the German passenger
circUng the deck indefatigably, attended by his
two gyrating children.

" That's a very nice gentleman." This informa-
tion, together with the fact that he was a widower
and a regular passenger twice a year by the ship,
was communicated to me suddenly by our captain.
At intervals through the day he would pop out

POLAND REVISITED 213

of the chart-room and offer me short snatches
of conversation. He owned a simple soul and a
not very entertaining mind, and he was without
mahce and, I believe, quite unconsciously, a warm
Germanophil. And no wonder! As he told me
himself, he had been fifteen years on that run,
and spent almost as much of his life in Hamburg
as in Harwich.

" Wonderful people they are," he repeated from
time to time, without entering into particulars, but
with many nods of sagacious obstinacy. What he
knew of them, I suppose, were a few commercial
travellers and small merchants, most likely. But
I had observed long before that German genius
has a hypnotising power over half-baked souls
and half-Hghted minds. There is an immense
force of suggestion in highly organised mediocrity.
Had it not hypnotised half Europe ? My man was
very much under the spell of German excellence.
On the other hand, his contempt for France was
equally general and unbounded. I tried to advance
some arguments against this position, but I only
succeeded in making him hostile. " I believe
you are a Frenchman yourself," he snarled at
last, giving me an intensely suspicious look; and
forthwith broke off communications with a man
of such unsound sympathies.

Hour by hour the blotting-paper sky and the
great fiat greenish smudge of the sea had been

214 POLAND REVISITED

taking on a darker tone, without any change in
their colouring and texture. Evening was coming
on over the North Sea. Black uninteresting hum-
mocks of land appeared, dotting the duskiness of
water and clouds in the Eastern board: tops of
islands fringing the German shore. While I was
looking at their antics amongst the waves — and
for all their sohdity they were very elusive things
in the failing Hght — another passenger came out
on deck. This one wore a dark overcoat and a
grey cap. The yellow leather strap of his binocular
case crossed his chest. His elderly red cheeks
nourished but a very thin crop of short white
hairs, and the end of his nose was so perfectly
round that it determined the whole character of
his physiognomy. Indeed nothing else in it had
the sHghtest chance to assert itself. His disposi-
tion, unlike the widower's, appeared to be mild and
humane. He offered me the loan of his glasses.
He had a wife and some small children concealed
m the depths of the ship, and he thought they
were very well where they were. His eldest son
was about the decks somewhere.

" We are Americans," he remarked weightily,
but in a rather pecuHar tone. He spoke EngHsh
with the accent of our captain's " wonderful
people," and proceeded to give me the history of
the family's crossing the Atlantic in a White Star
liner. They remained in England just the time

POLAND REVISITED 215

necessary for a railway journey from Liverpool to
Harwich. His people (those in the depths of the
ship) were naturally a little tired.

At that moment a young man of about twenty,
his son, rushed up to us from the fore-deck in a
state of intense elation. " Hurrah," he cried under
his breath. " The first German Hght! Hurrah! "

And those two American citizens shook hands
on it with the greatest fervour, while I turned
away and received full in the eyes the briUiant
wink of the Borkum lighthouse squatting low
down in the darkness. The shade of the night
had settled on the North Sea.

I do not think I have ever seen before a night
so full of lights. The great change of sea Hfe since
my time was brought home to me. I had been
conscious all day of an interminable procession of
steamers. They went on and on as if in chase of
each other, the Baltic trade, the trade of Scandi-
navia, of Denmark, of Germany, pitching heavily
into a head sea and bound for the gateway of
Dover Straits. Singly, and in small companies of
two and three, they emerged from the dull, colour-
less, sunless distances ahead as if the supply of
rather roughly finished mechanical toys were in-
exhaustible in some mysterious cheap store away
there, below the grey curve of the earth. Cargo
steam vessels have reached by this time a height
of utiHtarian ughness which, when one reflects

2i6 POLAND REVISITED

that it is the product of human ingenuity, strikes
hopeless awe into one. These dismal creations look
still uglier at sea than in port, and with an added
touch of the ridiculous. Their rolHng waddle when
seen at a certain angle, their abrupt clockwork
nodding in a sea-way, so unhke the soaring lift
and swing of a craft under sail, have in them some-
thing caricatural, a suggestion of a low parody
directed at noble predecessors by an improved
generation of dull, mechanical toilers, conceited
and without grace.

When they switched on (each of these unlovely
cargo tanks carried tame hghtning within its slab-
sided body), when they switched on their lamps
they spangled the night with the cheap, electric,
shop-gHtter, here, there, and everywhere, as of
some High Street, broken up and washed out to
sea. Later, Heligoland cut into the overhead
darkness with its powerful beam, infinitely pro-
longed out of unfathomable night under the clouds.

I remained on deck until we stopped and a
steam pilot-boat, so overlighted amidships that
one could not make out her complete shape, glided
across our bows and sent a pilot on board. I fear
that the oar, as a working implement, will be-
come presently as obsolete as the sail. The pilot
boarded us in a motor-dinghy. More and more is
mankind reducing its physical activities to pulling
levers and twirling little wheels. Progress ! Yet the

POLAND REVISITED 217

older methods of meeting natural forces demanded
intelligence too; an equally fine readiness of wits.
And readiness of wits working in combination
with the strength of muscles made a more com-
plete man.

It was really a surprisingly small dinghy and it
ran to and fro like a water-insect fussing noisily
down there with immense self-importance. Within
hail of us the hull of the Elbe lightship floated all
dark and silent under its enormous round, service
lantern; a faithful black shadow watching the
broad estuary full of lights.

Such was my first view of the Elbe approached
under the wings of peace ready for flight away
from the luckless shores of Europe. Our visual
impressions remain with us so persistently that I
find it extremely difficult to hold fast to the
rational behef that now everything is dark over
there, that the Elbe Hghtship has been towed
away from its post of duty, the triumphant beam
of HeHgoland extinguished, and the pilot-boat
laid up, or turned to warlike uses for lack of its
proper work to do. And obviously it must be so.

Any triclde of oversea trade that passes yet that
way must be creeping along cautiously with the
unhghted, war-blighted black coast close on one
hand, and sudden death on the other. For all the
space we steamed through that Sunday evening
must now be one great minefield, sown thickly

2i8 POLAND REVISITED

with the seeds of hate; while submarines steal
out to sea, over the very spot perhaps where the
insect-dinghy put a pilot on board of us with so
much fussy importance. Mines; Submarines. The
last word in sea-warfare! Progress — impressively
disclosed by this war.

There have been other wars! Wars not inferior
in the greatness of the stake and in the fierce
animosity of feeHngs. During that one which was
finished a hundred years ago it happened that
while the EngHsh Fleet was keeping watch on
Brest, an American, perhaps Fulton himself,
offered to the Maritime Prefect of the port and
to the French Admiral, an invention which would
sink all the unsuspecting English ships one after
another — or, at any rate most of them. The offer
was not even taken into consideration; and the
Prefect ends his report to the Minister in Paris
with a fine phrase of indignation: " It is not the
sort of death one would deal to brave men."

And behold, before history had time to hatch
another war of the like proportions in the intensity
of aroused passions and the greatness of issues,
the dead flavour of archaism descended on the
manly sentiment of those self-denying words. Man-
kind has been demoralised since by its own mastery
of mechanical appliances. Its spirit is apparently
so weak now, and its flesh has grown so strong, that
it will face any deadly horror of destruction and

POLAND REVISITED 219

cannot resist the temptation to use any stealthy,
murderous contrivance. It has become the in-
toxicated slave of its own detestable ingenuity.
It is true, too, that since the Napoleonic time
another sort of war-doctrine has been inculcated
in a nation, and held out to the world.

IV

On this journey of ours, which for me was essen-
tially not a progress, but a retracing of footsteps
on the road of life, I had no beacons to look
for in Germany. I had never lingered in that
land which, on the whole, is so singularly barren
of memorable manifestations of generous sym-
pathies and magnanimous impulses. An ineradic-
able, invincible, provincialism of envy and vanity
chngs to the forms of its thought hke a frowsy
garment. Even while yet very young I turned
my eyes away from it instinctively as from a
threatening phantom. I beheve that children and
dogs have, in their innocence, a special power of
perception as far as spectral apparitions and
coming misfortunes are concerned.

I let myself be carried through Germany as if
it were pure space, without sights, without sounds.
No whispers of the war reached my voluntary
abstraction. And perhaps not so very voluntary

220 POLAND REVISITED

after all! Each of us is a fascinating spectacle to
himself, and I had to watch my own personahty
returning from another world, as it were, to re-
visit the ghmpses of old moons. Considering the
condition of humanity, I am, perhaps, not so
much to blame for giving myself up to that occu-
pation. We prize the sensation of our continuity,
and we can only capture it in that way. By
watching.

We arrived in Cracow late at night. After a
scrambly supper, I said to my eldest boy, " I
can't go to bed. I am going out for a look round.
Coming ? "

He was ready enough. For him, all this was part
of the interesting adventure of the whole journey.
We stepped out of the portal of the hotel into an
empty street, very silent and bright with moon-
Hght. I was, indeed, revisiting the ghmpses of the
moon. I felt so much like a ghost that the dis-
covery that I could remember such material things
as the right turn to take and the general direction
of the street gave me a moment of wistful surprise.

The street, straight and narrow, ran into the
great Market Square of the town, the centre of
its affairs and of the hghter side of its life. We
could see at the far end of the street a promising
widening of space. At the corner an unassuming
(but armed) pohceman, wearing ceremoniously at
midnight a pair of white gloves which made his

POLAND REVISITED 221

big hands extremely noticeable, turned his head
to look at the grizzled foreigner holding forth in a
strange tongue to a youth on whose arm he leaned.

The Square, immense in its solitude, was full to
the brim of moonhght. The garland of lights at the
foot of the houses seemed to burn at the bottom
of a bluish pool. I noticed with infinite satisfac-
tion that the unnecessary trees the MunicipaHty
insisted upon sticking between the stones had been
steadily refusing to grow. They were not a bit
bigger than the poor victims I could remember.
Also, the paving operations seemed to be exactly
at the same point at which I left them forty years
before. There were the dull, torn-up patches on
that bright expanse, the piles of paving material
looking ominously black, like heads of rocks on
a silvery sea. Who was it that said that Time
works wonders ? What an exploded superstition !
As far as these trees and these paving stones were
concerned, it had worked nothing. The suspicion
of the unchangeableness of things already vaguely
suggested to my senses by our rapid drive from
the railway station was agreeably strengthened
within me.

" We are now on the line A.B.," I said to my
companion, importantly.

It was the name bestowed in my time on one
of the sides of the Square by the senior students
of that town of classical learning and historical

222 POLAND REVISITED

relics. The common citizens knew nothing of it,
and, even if they had, would not have dreamed
of taking it seriously. He who used it was of the
initiated, belonged to the Schools. We youngsters
regarded that name as a fine jest, the invention of
a most excellent fancy. Even as I uttered it to my
boy I experienced again that sense of my privi-
leged initiation. And then, happening to look up
at the wall, I saw in the light of the corner lamp,
a white, cast-iron tablet fixed thereon, bearing an
inscription in raised black letters, thus : " Line
A.B." Heavens! The name had been adopted
officially! Any town urchin, any guttersnipe, any
herb-selling woman of the market-place, any wan-
dering Boeotian, was free to talk of the fine A.B.,
to walk on the line A.B., to appoint to meet his
friends on the line A.B. It had become a mere
name in a directory. I was stunned by the extreme
mutability of things. Time could work wonders,
and no mistake. A MunicipaHty had stolen an
invention of excellent fancy, and a fine jest had
turned into a horrid piece of cast-iron.

I proposed that we should walk to the other end
of the hne, using the profaned name, not only with-
out gusto, but with positive distaste. And this,
too, was one of the wonders of Time, for a bare
minute had worked that change. There was at
the end of the Hne a certain street I wanted to
look at, I explained to my companion.

POLAND REVISITED 223

To our right the unequal massive towers of St.
Mary's Church soared aloft into the ethereal
radiance of the air, very black on their shaded
sides, glowing with a soft phosphorescent sheen
on the others. In the distance the Florian Gate,
thick and squat under its pointed roof, barred the
street with the square shoulders of the old city
wall. In the narrow, briUiantly pale vista of bluish
flagstones and silvery fronts of houses, its black
archway stood out small and very distinct.

There was not a soul in sight, and not even the
echo of a footstep for our ears. Into this coldly
illuminated and dumb emptiness there issued out
of my aroused memory, a small boy of eleven,
wending his way, not very fast, to a preparatory
school for day-pupils on the second floor of the
third house down from the Florian Gate. It was
in the winter months of 1868. At eight o'clock of
every morning that God made, sleet or shine, I
walked up Florian Street. But of that, my first
school, I remember very Httle. I beHeve that one of
my co-sufferers there has become a much appreciated
editor of historical documents. But I didn't suffer
much from the various imperfections of my first
school. I was rather indifferent to school troubles.
I had a private gnawing worm of my own. This was
the time of my father's last illness. Every evening
at seven, turning my back on the Florian Gate,
I walked all the way to a big old house in a quiet

224 POLAND REVISITED

narrow street a good distance beyond the Great
Square. There, in a large drawing-room, panelled
and bare, with heavy cornices and a lofty ceihng,
in a little oasis of light made by two candles in a
desert of dusk, I sat at a little table to worry and
ink myself all over till the task of my preparation
was done. The table of my toil faced a tall white
door, which was kept closed; now and then it would
come ajar and a nun in a white coif would squeeze
herself through the crack, glide across the room,
and disappear. There were two of these noiseless
nursing nuns. Their voices were seldom heard.
For, indeed, what could they have had to say?
When they did speak to me it was with their
lips hardly moving, in a claustral, clear whisper.
Our domestic matters were ordered by the elderly
housekeeper of our neighbour on the second floor,
a Canon of the Cathedral, lent for the emergency.
She, too, spoke but seldom. She wore a black
dress with a cross hanging by a chain on her ample
bosom. And though when she spoke she moved
her lips more than the nuns, she never let her
voice rise above a peacefully murmuring note.
The air around me was all piety, resignation, and
silence.

I don't know what would have become of me if
I had not been a reading boy. My prep, finished I
would have had nothing to do but sit and watch
the awful stillness of the sick room flow out through

POLAND REVISITED 225

the closed door and coldly enfold my scared heart.
I suppose that in a futile childish way I would have
gone crazy. But I was a reading boy. There were
many books about, lying on consoles, on tables,
and even on the floor, for we had not had time to
settle down. I read! What did I not read! Some-
times the elder nun, gliding up and casting a mis-
trustful look on the open pages, would lay her hand
Hghtly on my head and suggest in a doubtful
whisper, " Perhaps it is not very good for you to
read these books." I would raise my eyes to her
face mutely, and with a vague gesture of giving it
up she would ghde away.

Later in the evening, but not always, I would be
permitted to tip-toe into the sick room to say
good-night to the figure prone on the bed, which
often could not acknowledge my presence but by
a slow movement of the eyes, put my Hps dutifully
to the nerveless hand lying on the coverlet, and
tip-toe out again. Then I would go to bed, in a
room at the end of the corridor, and often, not
always, cry myself into a good sound sleep.

I looked forward to what was coming with an
incredulous terror. I turned my eyes from it some-
times with success, and yet all the time I had an
awful sensation of the inevitable. I had also
moments of revolt which stripped off me some of
my simple trust in the government of the uni-
verse. But when the inevitable entered the sick

226 POLAND REVISITED

room and the white door was thrown wide open,
I don't think I found a single tear to shed. I
have a suspicion that the Canon's housekeeper
looked on me as the most callous little wretch on
earth.

The day of the funeral came in due course and
all the generous " Youth of the Schools," the
grave Senate of the University, the delegations
of the Trade-guilds, might have obtained (if they
cared) de visu evidence of the callousness of the
little wretch. There was nothing in my aching
head but a few words, some such stupid sentences
as, " It's done," or, " It's accomplished " (in Pohsh
it is much shorter), or something of the sort, re-
peating itself endlessly. The long procession moved
out of the narrow street, down a long street, past
the Gothic front of St. Mary's under its unequal
towers, towards the Florian Gate.

In the moonhght-flooded silence of the old town
of glorious tombs and tragic memories, I could see
again the small boy of that day following a hearse;
a space kept clear in which I walked alone, con-
scious of an enormous following, the clumsy sway-
ing of the tall black machine, the chanting of the
surpliced clergy at the head, the flames of tapers
passing under the low archway of the gate, the
rows of bared heads on the pavements with fixed,
serious eyes. Half the population had turned out
on that fine May afternoon. They had not come to

POLAND REVISITED 227

honour a great achievement, or even some splendid
failure. The dead and they were victims alike of
an unrelenting destiny which cut them off from
every path of merit and glory. They had come
only to render homage to the ardent fideHty of
the man whose hfe had been a fearless confession
in word and deed of a creed which the simplest
heart in that crowd could feel and understand.

It seemed to me that if I remained longer there
in that narrow street I should become the helpless
prey of the Shadows I had called up. They were
crowding upon me, enigmatic and insistent in their
clinging air of the grave that tasted of dust and
of the bitter vanity of old hopes.

" Let's go back to the hotel, my boy," I said.
" It's getting late."

It will be easily understood that I neither
thought nor dreamt that night of a possible war.
For the next two days I went about amongst my
fellow men, who welcomed me with the utmost
consideration and friendliness, but unanimously
derided my fears of a war. They would not
beHeve in it. It was impossible. On the evening
of the second day I was in the hotel's smoking
room, an irrationally private apartment, a sanc-
tuary for a few choice minds of the town, always
pervaded by a dim rehgious Hght, and more
hushed than any club reading-room I have ever
been in. Gathered into a small knot, we were

228 POLAND REVISITED

discussing the situation in subdued tones suitable
to the genius of the place.

A gentleman with a fine head of white hair
suddenly pointed an impatient finger in my direc-
tion and apostrophised me.

" What I want to know is whether, should
there be war, England would come in."

The time to draw a breath, and I spoke out for
the Cabinet without faltering.

" Most assuredly. I should think all Europe
knows that by this time."

He took hold of the lapel of my coat, and, giving
it a shght jerk for greater emphasis, said forcibly:

" Then, if England will, as you say, and all the
world knows it, there can be no war. Germany
won't be so mad as that."

On the morrow by noon we read of the German
ultimatum. The day after came the declaration
of war, and the Austrian mobilisation order. We
were fairly caught. All that remained for me to
do was to get my party out of the way of eventual
shells. The best move which occurred to me was
to snatch them up instantly into the mountains
to a PoHsh health resort of great repute — ^which
I did (at the rate of one hundred miles in eleven
hours) by the last civihan train permitted to leave
Cracow for the next three weeks.

And there we remained amongst the Poles from
all parts of Poland, not officially interned, but

POLAND REVISITED 229

simply unable to obtain the permission to travel
by train, or road. It was a wonderful, a poignant
two months. This is not the time, and, perhaps,
not the place, to enlarge upon the tragic character
of the situation; a whole people seeing the cul-
mination of its misfortunes in a final catastrophe,
unable to trust anyone, to appeal to anyone, to
look for help from any quarter; deprived of all
hope and even of its last illusions, and unable, in
the trouble of minds and the unrest of consciences,
to take refuge in stoical acceptance. I have seen
all this. And I am glad I have not so many years
left me to remember that appalling feeling of
inexorable fate, tangible, palpable, come after so
many cruel years, a figure of dread, murmuring with
iron hps the final words: Ruin — and Extinction.

But enough of this. For our little band there
was the awful anguish of incertitude as to the
real nature of events in the West. It is difficult
to give an idea how ugly and dangerous things
looked to us over there. Belgium knocked down
and trampled out of existence, France giving in
under repeated blows, a military collapse like that
of 1870, and England involved in that disastrous
alliance, her army sacrificed, her people in a panic!
PoHsh papers, of course, had no other but German
sources of information. Naturally, we did not
beheve all we read, but it was sometimes exces-
sively difficult to react with sufficient firmness.

230 POLAND REVISITED

We used to shut our door, and there, away from
everybody, we sat weighing the news, hunting up
discrepancies, scenting Hes, finding reasons for
hopefulness, and generally cheering each other up.
But it was a beastly time. People used to come to
me with very serious news and ask, " What do
you think of it ? " And my invariable answer
was : " Whatever has happened, or is going to
happen, whoever wants to make peace, you may
be certain that England will not make it, not for
ten years, if necessary."

But enough of this, too. Through the unremit-
ting efforts of Polish friends we obtained at last
the permission to travel to Vienna. Once there,
the wing of the American Eagle was extended
over our uneasy heads. We cannot be sufficiently
grateful to the American Ambassador (who, all
along, interested himself in our fate) for his exer-
tions on our behalf, his invaluable assistance and
the real friendliness of his reception in Vienna.
Owing to Mr. Penfield's action we obtained the
permission to leave Austria. And it was a near
thing, for his Excellency has informed my American
publishers since that a week later orders were
issued to have us detained till the end of the war.
However, we effected our hair's-breadth escape
into Italy; and, reaching Genoa, took passage in
a Dutch mail steamer, homeward-bound from
Java with London as a port of call.

POLAND REVISITED 231

On that sea-route I might have picked up a
memory at every mile if the past had not been
ecHpsed by the tremendous actuaHty. We saw
the signs of it in the emptiness of the Mediter-
ranean, the aspect of Gibraltar, the misty ghmpse
in the Bay of Biscay of an outward-bound convoy
of transports, in the presence of British submarines
in the Channel. Innumerable drifters flying the
Naval flag dotted the narrow waters, and two
Naval oflicers coming on board off the South
Foreland, piloted the ship through the Downs.

The Downs! There they were, thick with the
memories of my sea-Hfe. But what were to me
now the futilities of an individual past? As our
ship's head swung into the estuary of the Thames,
a deep, yet faint, concussion passed through the
air, a shock rather than a sound, which missing
my ear found its way straight into my heart.
Turning instinctively to look at my boys, I hap-
pened to meet my wife's eyes. She also had felt
profoundly, coming from far away across the grey
distances of the sea, the faint boom of the big
guns at work on the coast of Flanders — ^shaping
the future.

FIRST NEWS
1918

Four years ago, on the first day of August, in the
town of Cracow, Austrian Poland, nobody would
believe that the war was coming. My apprehen-
sions were met by the words : " We have had
these scares before." This increduHty was so
universal amongst people of intelligence and in-
formation, that even I, who had accustomed myself
to look at the inevitable for years past, felt my
conviction shaken. At that time, it must be noted,
the Austrian army was already partly mobihsed,
and as we came through Austrian Silesia we had
noticed all the bridges being guarded by soldiers.

" Austria will back down," was the opinion of
all the well-informed men with whom I talked on
the first of August. The session of the University
was ended and the students were either all gone
or going home to different parts of Poland, but
the professors had not all departed yet on their
respective hoHdays, and amongst them the tone
of scepticism prevailed generally. Upon the whole
there was very little inclination to talk about the
possibility of a war. Nationally, the Poles felt

233

234 FIRST NEWS

that from their point of view there was nothing
to hope from it. " Whatever happens," said a
very distinguished man to me, *' we may be certain
that it's our skins which will pay for it as usual."
A well-known Hterary critic and writer on econom-
ical subjects said to me: " War seems a material
impossibihty, precisely because it would mean the
complete ruin of all material interests."

He was wrong, as we know; but those who said
that Austria as usual would back down were, as a
matter of fact perfectly right. Austria did back
down. WTiat these men did not foresee was the
interference of Germany. And one cannot blame
them very well; for who could guess that, when
the balance stood even, the German sword would
be thrown into the scale with nothing in the open
pohtical situation to justify that act, or rather
that crime — if crime can ever be justified? For,
as the same intelligent man said to me : " As it is,
those people " (meaning Germans) " have very
nearly the whole world in their economic grip.
Their prestige is even greater than their actual
strength. It can get for them practically every-
thing they want. Then why risk it ? " And there
was no apparent answer to the question put in
that way. I must also say that the Poles had no
illusions about the strength of Russia. Those
illusions were the monopoly of the Western world.

Next day the Hbrarian of the University invited

FIRST NEWS 235

me to come and have a look at the Hbrary which I
had not seen since I was fourteen years old. It
was from him that I learned that the greater part
of my father's MSS. was preserved there. He
confessed that he had not looked them through
thoroughly yet, but he told me that there was
a lot of very important letters bearing on the
epoch from '60 to '63, to and from many
prominent Poles of that time: and he added:
" There is a bundle of correspondence that will
appeal to you personally. Those are letters written
by your father to an intimate friend in whose
papers they were found. They contain many
references to yourself, though you couldn't have
been more than four years old at the time. Your
father seems to have been extremely interested
in his son." That afternoon I went to the Uni-
versity, taking with me my eldest son. The
attention of that young Englishman was mainly
attracted by some relics of Copernicus in a glass
case. I saw the bundle of letters and accepted
the kind proposal of the hbrarian that he should
have them copied for me during the hoHdays. In
the range of the deserted vaulted rooms hned
with books, full of august memories, and in the
passionless silence of all this enshrined wisdom,
we walked here and there talking of the past,
the great historical past in which Hved the inex-
tinguishable spark of national Hfe; and all around

236 FIRST NEWS

us the centuries-old buildings lay still and empty,
composing themselves to rest after a year of work
on the minds of another generation.

No echo of the German ultimatum to Russia
penetrated that academical peace. But the news
had come. When we stepped into the street out
of the deserted main quadrangle, we three, I
imagine, were the only people in the town who
did not know of it. My boy and I parted from
the hbrarian (who hurried home to pack up for
his hoHday) and walked on to the hotel, where we
found my wife actually in the car waiting for us
to take a run of some ten miles to the country
house of an old school-friend of mine. He had
been my greatest chum. In my wanderings about
the world I had heard that his later career both
at school and at the University had been of extra-
ordinary brilliance — in classics, I beheve. But in
this, the iron-grey moustache period of his Hfe,
he informed me with badly concealed pride that
he had gained world fame as the Inventor — no,
Inventor is not the word — Producer, I beheve
would be the right term — of a wonderful kind of
beetroot seed. The beet grown from this seed
contained more sugar to the square inch — or was
it to the square root ? — than any other kind of
beet. He exported this seed, not only with profit
(and even to the United States), but with a certain
amount of glory which seemed to have gone

FIRST NEWS 237

slightly to his head. There is a fundamental
strain of agriculturaHst in a Pole which no amount
of briUiance, even classical, can destroy. While
we were having tea outside, looking down the
lovely slope of the gardens at the view of the city
in the distance, the possibilities of the war faded
from our minds. Suddenly my friend's wife came
to us with a telegram in her hand and said calmly:
" General mobiHsation, do you know ? " We
looked at her Hke men aroused from a dream.
" Yes," she insisted, " they are already taking
the horses out of the ploughs and carts." I said:
" We had better go back to town as quick as we
can," and my friend assented with a troubled
look: "Yes, you had better." As we passed
through villages on our way back we saw mobs
of horses assembled on the commons with soldiers
guarding them, and groups of villagers looking on
silently at the officers with their note-books check-
ing deHveries and writing out receipts. Some old
peasant women were already weeping aloud.

When our car drew up at the door of the hotel,
the manager himself came to help my wife out.
In the first moment I did not quite recognise
him. His luxuriant black locks were gone, his
head was closely cropped, and as I glanced at
it he smiled and said : " I shall sleep at the
barracks to-night."

I cannot reproduce the atmosphere of that night,

238 FIRST NEWS

the first night after mobilisation. The shops and
the gateways of the houses were of course closed,
but all through the dark hours the town hummed
with voices; the echoes of distant shouts entered
the open windows of our bedroom. Groups of men
talking noisily walked in the middle of the road-
way escorted by distressed women: men of all
callings and of all classes going to report them-
selves at the fortress. Now and then a mihtary
car tooting furiously would whisk through the
streets empty of wheeled traffic, hke an intensely
black shadow under the great flood of electric
lights on the grey pavement.

But what produced the greatest impression on
my mind was a gathering at night in the coffee-
room of my hotel of a few men of mark whom I
was asked to join. It was about one o'clock in
the morning. The shutters were up. For some
reason or other the electric Hght was not switched
on, and the big room was Ht up only by a few tall
candles, just enough for us to see each other's faces
by. I saw in those faces the awful desolation of
men whose country, torn in three, found itself
engaged in the contest with no will of its own,
and not even the power to assert itself at the
cost of hfe. All the past was gone, and there was
no future, whatever happened; no road which
did not seem to lead to moral annihilation. I
remember one of those men addressing me after

FIRST NEWS 239

a period of mournful silence compounded of mental
exhaustion and unexpressed forebodings.

" What do you think England will do ? If there
is a ray of hope anywhere it is only there."

I said: " I beHeve I know what England will
do " (this was before the news of the violation of
Belgian neutrality arrived), " though I won't tell
you, for I am not absolutely certain. But I can
tell you what I am absolutely certain of. It is
this: If England comes into the war, then, no
matter who may want to make peace at the end
of six months at the cost of right and justice,
England will keep on fighting for years if neces-
sary. You may reckon on that."

" What, even alone ? " asked somebody across
the room.

I said: " Yes, even alone. But if things go so
far as that England will not be alone."

I think that at that moment I must have been
inspired.

WELL DONE

1918

It can be safely said that for the last four years
the seamen of Great Britain have done weU. I
mean that every kind and sort of human being
classified as seaman, steward, fore-mast hand, fire-
man, lamp-trimmer, mate, master, engineer, and
also all through the innumerable ratings of the Navy
up to that of Admiral, has done well. I don't say
marvellously well or miraculously well or wonder-
fully well or even very well, because these are
simply over-statements of undiscipHned minds. I
jion't deny tjiat a man may be a marvellous being,
\ but this is not Hkely to be discovered in his Hfe-

\ time, and not always even after he is dead. Man's
marvellousness is a hidden thing, because the
secrets of his heart are not to be read by hisi
fellows. As to a man's work, if it is done well it
is the very utmost that can be said. You can do
well, and you can do no more for people to see. '

-fe-the Navy, where human values are~th~oroughly
understood, the highest signal of commendation
compHmenting a ship (that is, a ship's company) on
Q 241

242

WELL DONE

some achievement, consists exactly of those two
simple words " Well done," followed by the name
of the ship. Not marvellously done, astonishingly
done, wonderfully done — no, only just:
. " Well done, so-and-so."

/ And to the men it is a matter of infinite pride

' that somebody should judge it proper to mention

aloud, as it were, that they have done well. It is

1 a memorable occurrence, for in the sea services

i you are expected professionally and as a matter

' of course to do well, because nothing less will do.

^^ And in sober speech no man can be expected to

do more than well. The superlatives are mere

signs of uninformed wonder. Thus the official

signal which can express nothing but a deHcate

share of appreciation becomes a great honour.

Speaking now as a purely civil seaman (or,
perhaps, I ought to say civilian, because pohte-
ness is not what I have in my mind) I may say
that I have never expected the Merchant Service
to do otherwise than well during the war. There
were people who obviously did not feel the same
confidence, nay, who even confidently expected
to see the collapse of merchant seamen's courage.
I must admit that such pronouncements did arrest
my attention. In my time I have never been able
to detect any faint hearts in the ships' companies
with whom I have served in various capacities.
But I reflected that I had left the sea in '94,

WELL DONE 243

twenty years before the outbreak of the war
that was to apply its severe test to the quality of
modern seamen. Perhaps they had deteriorated,
I said unwillingly to myself. I remembered also
the alarmist articles I had read about the great
number of foreigners in the British Merchant
Service, and I didn't know how far these lamenta-
tions were justified.

In my time the proportion of non-Britishers in
the crews of the ships flying the red ensign was
rather under one-third, which, as a matter of fact,
was less than the proportion allowed under the very
strict French navigation laws for the crews of the
ships of that nation. For the strictest laws aiming
at the preservation of national seamen had to
recognise the difficulties of manning merchant
ships all over the world. The one-third of the
French law seemed to be the irreducible mini-
mum. But the British proportion was even less.
Thus it may be said that up to the date I have
mentioned the crews of British merchant ships en-
gaged in deep water voyages to AustraHa, to the
East Indies and round the Horn were essentially
British. The small jprqportion^of foreigners which
I remember were mos tly^S candinayians , and my
g'enerarimpression remains that those men were
good stuff. They appeared always able and ready
to do their duty by the flag under which they
served. The majority were Norwegians, whose

244 WELL DONE

courage and straightness of character are matters
beyond doubt. I remember also a couple of Finns,
both carpenters, of course, and very good crafts-
men; a Swede, the most scientific sailmaker I
ever met; another Swede, a steward, who really
might have been called a British seaman since he
had sailed out of London for over thirty years, a
rather superior person; one ItaHan, an everlast-
ingly smiling but a pugnacious character; one
Frenchman, a most excellent sailor, tireless and
indomitable under very difficult circumstances; one
Hollander, whose placid manner of looking at the
ship going to pieces under our feet I shall never
forget, and one young, colourless, muscularly very
strong German, of no particular character. Of non-
European crews, lascars and Kalashes, I have had
very little experience, and that was only in one
steamship and for something less than a year.
It was on the same occasion that I had my only
sight of Chinese firemen. Sight is the exact word.
One didn't speak to them. One saw them going
along the decks, to and fro, characteristic figures
with rolled-up pigtails, very dirty when coming off
duty and very clean-faced when going on duty.
They never looked at anybody, and one never had
occasion to address them directly. Their appear-
ances in the light of day were very regular, and yet
somewhat ghostHke in their detachment and silence.
But of the white crews of British ships and

WELL DONE 245

almost exclusively British in blood and descent,
the immediate predecessors of the men whose
worth the nation has discovered for itself to-day,
I have had a thorough experience. At first
amongst them, then with them, I have shared all
the conditions of their very special Hfe. For it
was very special. In my early days, starting out
on a voyage was Hke being launched into Eternity.
I say advisedly Eternity instead of Space, because
of the boundless silence which swallowed up one
for eighty days — for one hundred days — for even
yet more days of an existence without echoes and
whispers. Like Eternity itself! For one can't
conceive a vocal Eternity. An enormous silence,
in which there was nothing to connect one with
the Universe but the incessant wheeHng about of
the sun and other celestial bodies, the alternation
of Hght and shadow, eternally chasing each other
over the sky. The time of the earth, though most
carefully recorded by the half-hourly bells, did
not count in reality.

It was a special life, and the men were a very
special kind of men. By this I don't mean to say
they were more complex than the generahty of
mankind. Neither were they very much simpler.
I have already admitted that man is a marvellous
creature, and no doubt those particular men were
marvellous enough in their way. But in their
collective capacity they can be best defined as

246 WELL DONE

men who lived under the command to do well, or
perish utterly. I have written of them with all
^ the truth that was in me, and with all the im-
/^ partiality of which I was capable. Let me not be
misunderstood in this statement. Affection can
be very exacting, and can easily miss fairness on
^ the critical side. I have looked upon them with a
jealous eye, expecting perhaps even more than it
/ was strictly fair to expect. And no wonder — since
/ I had elected to be one of them very dehberately,
[ very completely, without any looking back or
! looking elsewhere. The circumstances were such
I as to give me the feeling of complete identification,
I a very vivid comprehension that if I wasn't one
) of them I was nothing at all. But what was most
difficult to detect was the nature of the deep
impulses which these men obeyed. What spirit
was it that mspired the unfaihng^ manifestations
I of their^ siriiple_ .fidehty ? No outward cohesive
j force of compulsion or discipHne was holding them
together or had ever shaped their unexpressed
standards. It was very mysterious. At last I
.came to the conclusion that it must be something
-^ 'in the nature of the life itself; the sea-life chosen
- blindly, embraced for the most part accidentally
by those men who appeared but a loose agglomera-
tion of individuals toihng for their Hving away
from the eyes of mankind. Who can tell how a
tradition comes into the world? We are children

WELL DONE 247

of the earth. It may be that the noblest tradition i
is but the offspring of material conditions, of the
hard necessities besetting men's precarious lives, j
But once it has been born it becomes a spirit.
Nothing can extinguish its force then. Clouds of
greedy selfishness, the subtle dialectics of revolt
or fear, may obscure it for a time, but in very
truth it remains an immortal ruler invested with
the power of honour and shame.

II

The mysteriously born tradition of sea-craft
commands unity in a body of workers engaged
in an occupation in which men have to depend
upon each_other. It raises them, so to speak,
above the frailties of their dead selves. I don't
wish to be suspected of lack of judgment and of
bhnd enthusiasm. I don't claim special morahty
or even special manHness for the men who in my
time really Hved at sea, and at the present time Hve
at any rate mostly at sea. But in their quaHties as
well as in their defects, in their weaknesses as well
as in their " virtue," there was indubitably some-
thing apart. They were never exactly of the earth
earthly. They couldn't be that. Chance or desire
(mostly desire) had set them apart, often in their
very childhood; and what is to be remarked is

248 WELL DONE

that from the very nature of things this early
appeal, this early desire, had to be of an imagina-
tive kind. Thus their simple minds had a sort of
sweetness. They were in a way preserved. I am
not alluding here to the preserving quaHties of
the salt in the sea. The salt of the sea is a very
good thing in its way; it preserves for instance one
from catching a beastly cold while one remains wet
for weeks together in the " roaring forties." But
in sober unpoetical truth the sea-salt never gets
much further than the seaman's skin, which in
certain latitudes it takes the opportunity to en-
crust very thoroughly. That and nothing more.
And then, what is this sea, the subject of so many
apostrophes in verse and prose addressed to its
greatness and its mystery by men who had never
penetrated either the one or the other ? The sea •
is uncertain, arbitrary, featureless, and violent.
Except when helped by the varied majesty of the
sky, there is something inane in its serenity and
something stupid in its wrath, which is endless,
boundless, persistent, and futile — a grey, hoary
thing raging Hke an old ogre uncertain of its prey.
Its very immensity is wearisome. At any time
within the navigating centuries mankind might
have addressed it with the words : *^ What are
you, after all? Oh, yes, we know. The greatest
scene of potential terror, a devouring enigma of
space. Yes. But our lives have been nothing if

WELL DONE 249

not a continuous defiance of what you can do
and what you may hold; a spiritual and material
defiance carried on in our plucky cockleshells on
and on beyond the successive provocations of
your unreadable horizons."

Ah, but the charm of the sea! Oh, yes, charm \
enough. Or rather a sort of unholy fascination as
of an elusive nymph whose embrace is death, and
a Medusa's head whose stare is terror. That sort ^^
of charm is calculated to keep men morally in
order. But as to sea-salt, with its particular
bitterness Hke nothing else on earth, that, I am
safe to say, penetrates no further than the sea-
men's lips. With them th*e inner soundness is
caused by another kind of preservative of which
(nobody will be surprised to hear) the main in-
gredient is a certain kind of love that has nothing
to do with the futile smiles and the futile passions
of the sea.

Being love this feehng is naturally naive and
imaginative. It has also in it that strain of fantasy
that is so often, nay almost invariably, to be found
in the temperament of a true seaman. But I repeat
that I claim no particular morality for seamen. I
will admit without difficulty that I have found
amongst them the usual defects of mankind,
characters not quite straight, uncertain tempers,
vacillating wills, capriciousness, small meannesses;
all this coming out mostly on the contact with

2SO WELL DONE

the shore; and all rather naive, pecuHar, a httle
fantastic. I have even had a downright thief
in my experience. One.

This is indeed a minute proportion, but it might
have been my luck; and since I am writing in
eulogy of seamen I feel irresistibly tempted to talk
about this unique specimen; not indeed to offer
him as an example of morality, but to bring out
certain characteristics and set out a certain point
of view. He was a large, strong man with a guile-
less countenance, not very communicative with
his shipmates, but when drawn into any sort of
conversation displaying a very painstaking earnest-
ness. He was fair and candid-eyed, of a very
satisfactory smartness, and, from the ofEcer-of-
the-watch point of view, — altogether dependable.
Then, suddenly, he went and stole. And he didn't
go away from his honourable kind to do that thing
to somebody on shore; he stole right there on
the spot, in proximity to his shipmates, on board
his own ship, with complete disregard for old
Brown, our night watchman (whose fame for
trustworthiness was utterly blasted for the rest
of the voyage) and in such a way as to bring the
profoundest possible trouble to all the blameless
souls animating that ship. He stole eleven golden
sovereigns, and a gold pocket chronometer and
chain. I am really in doubt whether jthe...ciiaie
should not "be entered irnder the category nL

WELL DONE 251

sacrilege rather than theft. Those things belonged
to the captain! There was certainly something
in the nature of the violation of a sanctuary, and
of a particularly impudent kind, too, because he
got his plunder out of the captain's state-room
while the captain was asleep there. But look,
now, at the fantasy of the man! After going
through the pockets of the clothes, he did not
hasten to retreat. No. He went deliberately into
the saloon and removed from the sideboard two
big, heavy, silver-plated lamps, which he carried to
the fore-end of the ship and stood symmetrically
on the knight-heads. This, I must explain, means
that he took them away as far as possible from the
place where they belonged. These were the deeds
of darkness. In the morning the bo'sun came
along dragging after him a hose to wash the
foc'sle head, and, beholding the shiny cabin
lamps, resplendent in the morning Hght, one on
each side of the bowsprit, he was paralysed with
awe. He dropped the nozzle from his nerveless
hands — and such hands, too! I happened along,
and he said to me in a distracted whisper: "Look
at that, sir, look." " Take them back aft at
once yourself," I said, very amazed, too. As we
approached the quarterdeck we perceived the
steward, a prey to a sort of sacred horror, holding!^
up before us the captain's trousers.

Bronzed men with brooms and buckets in their

252 WELL DONE

hands stood about with, open mouths. " I have
found them lying in the passage outside the cap-
tain's door," the steward declared faintly. The
additional statement that the captain's watch was
gone from its hook by the bedside raised the pain-
ful sensation to the highest pitch. We knew then
we had a thief amongst us. Our thief! Behold the
soHdarity of a ship's company. He couldn't be to
us hke any other thief. We all had to hve under
the shadow of his crime for days; but the poHce
kept on investigating, and one morning a young
woman appeared on board swinging a parasol, at-
tended by two poHcemen, and identified the culprit.
She was a barmaid of some bar near the Circular
Quay, and knew really nothing of our man except
that he looked like a respectable sailor. She had
seen him only twice in her Hfe. On the second
occasion he begged her nicely as a great favour
to take care for him of a small soHdly tied-up paper
parcel for a day or two. But he never came near
her again. At the end of three weeks she opened
it, and, of course, seeing the contents, was much
alarmed, and went to the nearest poHce-station
for advice. The pohce took her at once on board
our ship, where all hands were mustered on the
quarterdeck. She stared wildly at all our faces,
pointed suddenly a finger with a shriek, " That's
the man," and incontinently went ofi into a fit
of hysterics in front of thirty-six seamen. I must

WELL DONE 253

say that never in my life did I see a ship's com-
pany look so frightened. Yes, in this tale of guilt,
there was a curious absence of mere criminaHty,
and a touch of that fantasy which is often a
part of a seaman's character. It wasn't greed that
moved him, I think. It was something much less
simple : boredom, perhaps, or a bet, or the pleasure
of defiance.

And now for the point of view. It was given to
me by a short, black-bearded A.B. of the crew,
who on sea passages washed my flannel shirts,
mended my clothes and, generally, looked after my
room. He was an excellent needleman and washer-
man, and a very good sailor. Standing in this pecu-
liar relation to me, he considered himself privileged
to open his mind on the matter one evening when
he brought back to my cabin three clean and
neatly folded shirts. He was profoundly pained.
He said: "What a ship's company! Never seen
such a crowd! Liars, cheats, thieves. . . ."

It was a needlessly jaundiced view. There were
in that ship's company three or four fellows who
dealt in tall yarns, and I knew that on the passage
out there had been a dispute over a game in the
foc'sle once or twice of a rather acute kind, so
that aU card-playing had to be abandoned. In
regard to thieves, as we know, there was only
one, and he, I am convinced, came out of his
reserve to perform an exploit rather than to

254 WELL DONE

commit a crime. But my black-bearded friend's
indignation had its special morality, for he added,
with a burst of passion : " And on board our ship,
too — a ship Hke this. . . ."

Therein Hes the secret of the seamen's special
character as a body. The ship, this ship, our^hip,
the ship we serve, is the moral symbol of our life.
A ship has to be respected, actually and ideally;
her merit, her innocence, are sacred things. Of all
the creations of man she is the closest partner of
his toil and courage. From every point of view it
is imperative that you should do well by her.
And, as always in the case of true love, all you
can do for her adds only to the tale of her merits
in your heart. Mute and compelling, she claims
not only your fidehty, but your respect. And the
supreme " Well done ! " which you may earn is
made over to her.

Ill

It is my deep conviction, or, perhaps, I ought to
say my deep feeHng born from personal experience,
that it is not the sea but the ships of the sea that
guide and command that spirit of adventure which
some say is the second nature of British men. I
don't want to provoke a controversy (for intellec-
tually I am rather a Quietist) but I venture to

WELL DONE 255

affirm that the main characteristic of the British
men spread all over the world, is not the spirit of
adventure so much as the spirit of service. I think
that this could be demonstrated from the history
of great voyages and the general activity of the
race. That the British man has always hked his
service to be adventurous rather than otherwise
cannot be denied, for each British man began by
being young in his time when all risk has a glamour.
Afterwards, with the course of years, risk became
a part of his daily work; he would have missed it
from his side as one misses a loved companion.

The mere love of adventure is no saving grace.
It is no grace at all. It lays a man under no obH-
gation of faithfulness to an idea and even to his
own self. Roughly speaking, an adventurer may
be expected to have courage, or at any rate may
be said to need it. But courage in itself is not an
ideal. A successful highwayman showed courage
of a sort, and pirate crews have been known to
fight with courage or perhaps only with reckless
desperation in the manner of cornered rats. There
is nothing in the world to prevent a mere lover or
pursuer of adventure from running at any moment.
There is his own self, his mere taste for excitement,
the prospect of some sort of gain, but there is no
sort of loyalty to bind him in honour to consistent
conduct. I have noticed that the majority of
mere lovers of adventure are mightily careful of

2S6 WELL DONE

their skins ; and the proof of it is that so many of
them manage to keep it whole to an advanced age.
You find them in mysterious nooks of islands and
continents, mostly red-nosed and watery-eyed, and
not even amusingly boastful. There is nothing
more futile under the sun than a mere adventurer.
He might have loved at one time — ^which would
have been a saving grace. I mean loved adventure
for itself. But if so, he was bound to lose this
grace very soon. Adventure by itself is but a
phantom, a dubious shape without a heart. Yes,
there is nothing more futile than an adventurer;
but nobody can say that the adventurous activities
of the British race are stamped with the futility of
a chase after mere emotions.

The successive generations that went out to
sea from these Isles went out to toil desperately
in adventurous conditions. A man is a worker. If
he is not that hejis^^hjag^ -Just nothing — ^like a
mere adventurer. Those men understood the
nature of their work, but more or less dimly, in
various degrees of imperfection. The best and
greatest of their leaders even had never seen it
clearly, because of its magnitude and the remote-
ness of its end. This is the common fate of man-
kind, whose most^positive achievements are born
from dreams and visions followed loj;ally to an
unlmown destinatioii. And it doesn't matter. For
the great mass of mankind the only saving grace

WELL DONE 257

tlia^s_aeecied is steady fidelity to what is nearest
toJhLand, ajid Jh.eartJii_ tJi^^shi^
human effort.^ In other and in greater words,
what is needed is a sense of immediate duty,
and a feeling of impalpable constraint. Indeed, ^
seamen and duty are all the time inseparable
companions. It has been suggested to me that
this sense of duty is not a patriotic sense or a
religious sense, or even a social sense in a seaman.
I don't know. It seems to me that a seaman's
duty may be an unconscious compound of these
three, something perhaps smaller than either, but
something much more definite for the simple
mind and more adapted to the humbleness of the
seaman's task. It has been suggested also to me
that the impalpable constraint is put upon the
nature of a seaman by the Spirit of the Sea, which
he serves with a dumb and dogged devotion.

Those are fine words conveying a fine idea. But]
this I do know, that it is very difficult to displayl
a dogged devotion to a mere spirit, however great. \
In everyday life ordinary men require something
much more material, effective, definite and sym-
boHc on which to concentrate their love and their
devotion. And then, what is it, this Spirit of the
Sea ? It is too great and too elusive to be embraced
and taken to a human breast. All that a guileless
or guileful seaman knows of it is its hostility, its
exaction of toil as endless as its ever-renewed

2S8 WELL DONE

horizons. No. What awakens the seaman's sense
of duty, what lays that impalpable constraint upon
the strength of his manhness, what commands his
not always dumb if always dogged devotion, is
not the spirit of the sea but something that in his
eyes has a body, a character, a fascination, and
almost a soul — it is his ship.

There is not a day that has passed for many
centuries now without the sun seeing scattered
over all the seas groups of British men whose
material and moral existence is conditioned by their
loyalty to each other and their faithful devotion to
a ship.

Each age has sent its contingent, not of sons
(for the great mass of seamen have always been a
childless lot) but of loyal and obscure successors
taking up the modest but spiritual inheritance of a
hard life and simple duties; of duties so simple
that nothing ever could shake the traditional
attitude born from the physical conditions of the
service. It was always the ship, bound on any
possible errand in the service of the nation, that
has been the stage for the exercise of seamen's
primitive virtues. The dimness of great distances
and the obscurity of lives protected them from
the nation's admiring gaze. Those scattered dis-
tant ships' companies seemed to the eyes of the
earth only one degree removed (on the right side,
I suppose) from the other strange monsters of

WELL DONE 259

the deep. If spoken of at all they were spoken
of in tones of half-contemptuous indulgence. A
good many years ago it was my lot to write
about one of those ships' companies on a certain
sea, under certain circumstances, in a book of no
particular length.

That small group of men whom I tried to limn
with loving care, but sparing none of their weak-
nesses, was characterised by a friendly reviewer as
a lot of engaging ruffians. This gave me some food
for thought. Was it, then, in that guise that they
appeared through the mists of the sea, distant,
perplexed, and simple-minded? And what on
earth is an " engaging ruffian " ? He must be a
creature of Hterary imagination, I thought, for the
two words don't match in my personal experience.
It has happened to me to meet a few ruffians
here and there, but I never found one of them
" engaging." I consoled myself, however, by the
reflection that the friendly reviewer must have
been talking Hke a parrot, which so often seems to
understand what it says.

Yes, in the mists of the sea, and in their remote-
ness from the rest of the race, the shapes of those
men appeared distorted, uncouth and faint — so
faint as to be almost invisible. It needed the lurid
light of the engines of war to bring them out into
full view, very simple, without worldly graces,
organised now into a body of workers by the

26o WELL DONE

genius of one of themselves, who gave them a
place and a voice in the social scheme; but in the
main still apart in their homeless, childless genera-
tions, scattered in loyal groups over all the seas,
giving faithful care to their ships and serving the
nation, which, since they are seamen, can give
them no reward but the supreme " Well Done."

TRADITION

1918

^ " Work is the law. Like iron that lying idle
degenerates into a mass of useless rust, like water
that in an unruffled pool sickens into a stagnant
and corrupt state, so without action the spirit of
men turns to a dead thing, loses its force, ceases
prompting us to leave some trace of ourselves on
this earth." The sense of the above lines does not
belong to me. It may be found in the note-books
of one of the greatest artists that ever lived,

[Leonardo da Vinci. ^ It has a simplicity and a truth
which no amount of subtle comment can destroy.
The Master who had meditated so deeply on
the rebirth of arts and sciences, on the inward
beauty of all things, — ships' lines, women's faces
— and on the visible aspects of nature was pro-
foundly right in his pronouncement on the work
that is done on the earth. From the hard work ofl
men are born the sympathetic consciousness of a
common destiny, the fidelity to right practice
which makes great craftsmen, the sense of right
conduct which we may call honour, the devotion

to our calling and the idealism which is not a

261

i\-

i)

262 TRADITION

misty, winged angel without eyes, but a divine
figure of terrestrial aspect with a clear glance and
with its feet resting firmly on the earth on which
it was born.

And work will overcome all evil, except ignor-
ance, which is the condition of humanity and, like
the ambient air, fills the space between the various
sorts and conditions of men, which breeds hatred,
fear, and contempt between the masses of mankind,
and puts on men's lips, on their innocent lips, words
that are thoughtless and vain.

Thoughtless, for instance, were the words that
(in all innocence, I beHeve) came on the lips of
a prominent statesman making in the House of
Commons an eulogistic reference to the British
Merchant Service. In this name I include men of
diverse status and origin, who live on and by the
sea, by it exclusively, outside all professional
pretensions and social formulas, men for whom
not only their daily bread but their collective
character, their personal achievement and their
individual merit come from the sea. Those words
of the statesman were meant kindly; but, after all,
this is not a complete excuse. Rightly or wrongly,
we expect from a man of national importance
a larger and at the same time a more scrupulous
precision of speech, for it is possible that it may
go echoing down the ages. His words were:

" It is right when thinking of the Navy not to

TRADITION 263

forget the men of the Merchant Service, who have
shown — and it is more surprising because they
have had no traditions towards it — courage as
great," etc., etc.

And then he went on talking of the execution of
Captain Fryatt, an event of undying memory, but
less connected with the permanent, unchangeable
conditions of sea service than with the wrong view
German minds deHght in taking of EngHshmen's
psychology. The enemy, he said, meant by this
atrocity to frighten our sailors away from the sea.

^' What has happened ? " he goes on to ask.
" Never at any time in peace have sailors stayed
so short a time ashore or shown such a readiness
to step again into a ship."

Which means, in other words, that they an-
swered to the call. I should like to know at what
time of history the English Merchant Service, the
great body of merchant seamen, had failed to
answer the call. Noticed or unnoticed, ignored or
commended, they have answered invariably the
call to do their work, the very conditions of which
made them what they are. They have always
served the nation's needs through their own
invariable fidelity to the demands of their special
life; but with the development and complexity
of material civilisation they grew less prominent
to the nation's eye among all the vast schemes
of national industry. Never was the need greater

264 TRADITION

and the call to the services more urgent than
to-day. And those inconspicuous workers on
whose qualities depends so much of the national
welfare have answered it without dismay, facing
risk without glory, in the perfect faithfulness to
that tradition which the speech of the statesman
denies to them at the very moment when he
thinks fit to praise their courage . . . and mention
his surprise!

The hour of opportunity has struck — not for
the first time — for the Merchant Service; and if
I associate myself with all my heart in the admira-
tion and the praise which is the greatest reward
of brave men I must be excused from joining in
any sentiment of surprise. It is perhaps because
I have not been born to the inheritance of that
tradition, which has yet fashioned the fundamental
part of my character in my young days, that I am
so consciously aware of it and venture to vindicate
its existence in this outspoken manner.

Merchant seamen have always been what they
are now, from their earliest days, before the Royal
Navy had been fashioned out of the material
they furnished for the hands of kings and states-
men. Their work has made them, as work under-
taken with single-minded devotion makes men,
giving to their achievements that vitality and
continuity in which their souls are expressed,
tempered and matured through the succeeding

TRADITION 26s

generations. In its simplest definition the work
of merchant seamen has been to take ships en-
trusted to their care from port to port across the
seas; and, from the highest to the lowest, to
watch and labour with devotion for the safety
of the property and the lives committed to
their skill and fortitude through the hazards of
innumerable voyages.

That was always the clear task, the single aim,
the simple ideal, the only problem for an unselfish
solution. The terms of it have changed with the
years, its risks have worn different aspects from
time to time. There are no longer any unexplored
seas. Human ingenuity has devised better means
to meet the dangers of natural forces. But it is
always the same problem. The youngsters who
were growing up at sea at the end of my service
are commanding ships now. At least I have heard
of some of them who do. And whatever the shape
and power of their ships the character of the duty
remains the same. A mine or a torpedo that
strikes your ship is not so very different from a
sharp, uncharted rock tearing her hfe out of her
in another way. At a greater cost of vital energy,'
under the well-nigh intolerable stress of vigilance
and resolution, they are doing steadily the work
of their professional forefathers in the midst of
multiplied dangers. They go to and fro across the
oceans on their everlasting task: the same men,

266 TRADITION

the same stout hearts, the same fidehty to an
exacting tradition created by simple toilers who
in their time knew how to live and die at sea.

Allowed to share in this work and in this tradi-
tion for something like twenty years, I am bold
enough to think that perhaps I am not altogether
unworthy to speak of it. It was the sphere not
only of my activity but, I may safely say, also of
my affections; but after such a close connection
it is very difficult to avoid bringing in one's own
personahty. Without looking at all at the aspects
of the Labour problem, I can safely affirm that I
have never, never seen British seamen refuse any
risk, any exertion, any effort of spirit or body up
to the extremest demands of their calling. Years
ago — it seems ages ago — I have seen the crew of
a British ship fight the fire in the cargo for a whole
sleepless week and then, with her decks blown up,
I have seen them still continue the fight to save
the floating shell. And at last I have seen them
refuse to be taken off by a vessel standing by, and
this only in order " to see the last of our ship," at
the word, at the simple word, of a man who
commanded them, a w^orthy soul indeed, but of
no heroic aspect. I have seen that. I have shared
their days in small boats. Hard days. Ages ago.
And now let me mention a story of to-day.

I will try to relate it here mainly in the words
of the chief engineer of a certain steamship which.

TRADITION 267

after bunkering, left Lerwick bound for Iceland.
The weather was cold, the sea pretty rough, with
a stiff head wind. All went well till next day,
about 1.30 p.m., then the captain sighted a sus-
picious object far away to starboard. Speed was
increased at once to close in with the Faroes and
good lookouts were set fore and aft. Nothing
further was seen of the suspicious object, but
about half-past three without any warning the
ship was struck amidships by a torpedo which
exploded in the bunkers. None of the crew was
injured by the explosion, and all hands, without
exception, behaved admirably.

The chief officer with his watch managed to
lower the No. 3 boat. Two other boats had been
shattered by the explosion, and though another
Hfeboat was cleared and ready, there was no time
to lower it, and '' some of us jumped while others
were washed overboard. Meantime the captain
had been busy handing hfebelts to the men and
cheering them up with words and smiles, with no
thought of his own safety." The ship went down
in less than four minutes. The captain was the
last man on board, going down with her, and was
sucked under. On coming up he was caught under
an upturned boat to which five hands were cling-
ing. " One lifeboat," says the chief engineer,
" which was floating empty in the distance was
cleverly manoeuvred to our assistance by the

268 TRADITION

steward, who swam off to her pkickily. Our next
endeavour was to release the captain, who was
entangled under the boat. As it was impossible
to right her, we set-to to spHt her side open with
the boat hook, because by awful bad luck the head
of the axe we had flew off at the first blow and was
lost. The rescue took thirty minutes, and the ex-
tricated captain was in a pitiable condition, being
badly bruised and having swallowed a lot of salt
water. He was unconscious. While at that work
the submarine came to the surface quite close and
made a complete circle round us, the seven men
that we counted on the conning tower laughing
at our efforts.

" There were eighteen of us saved. I deeply
regret the loss of the chief officer, a fine fellow and
a kind shipmate showing splendid promise. The
other men lost — one A.B., one greaser, and two
firemen — were quiet, conscientious, good fellows."

With no restoratives in the boat, they endea-
voured to bring the captain round by means of
massage. Meantime the oars were got out in order
to reach the Faroes, which were about thirty miles
dead to windward, but after about nine hours'
hard work they had to desist, and, putting out a
sea-anchor, they took shelter under the canvas
boat-cover from the cold wind and torrential rain.
Says the narrator: ''We were all very wet and
miserable, and decided to have two biscuits all

TRADITION 269

round. The effects of this and being under the
shelter of the canvas warmed us up and made us
feel pretty well contented. At about sunrise the
captain showed signs of recovery, and by the time
the sun was up he was looking a lot better, much
to our relief."

After being informed of what had been done
the revived captain '' dropped a bombshell in our
midst," by proposing to make for the Shetlands,
which were only one hundred and fifty miles off.
" The wind is in our favour," he said. ^' I promise
to take you there. Are you all willing r " This —
comments the chief engineer — " from a man who
but a few hours previously had been hauled back
from the grave ! " The captain's confident manner
inspired the men, and they all agreed. Under the
best possible conditions a boat-run of one hun-
dred and fifty miles in the North Atlantic and
in winter weather would have been a feat of no
mean merit, but in the circumstances it required
uncommon nerve and skill to carry out such a
promise. With an oar for a mast and the
boat-cover cut down for a sail they started on
their dangerous journey, with the boat compass
and the stars for their guide. The captain's un-
daunted serenity buoyed them all up against
despondency. He told them what point he
was making for. It was Ronas Hill, " and we
struck it as straight as a die."

270 TRADITION

The chief engineer commends also the ship
steward for the manner in which he made the
httle food they had last, the cheery spirit he
manifested, and the great help he was to the
captain by keeping the men in good humour.
That trusty man had *' his hands cruelly chafed
with the rowing, but it never damped his spirits."

They made Ronas Hill (as straight as a die), and
the chief engineer cannot express their feelings of
gratitude and relief when they set their feet on
the shore. He praises the unbounded kindness of
the people in Hillswick. " It seemed to us all like
Paradise regained," he says, concluding his letter
with the words :

" And there was our captain, just his usual self,
as if nothing had happened, as if bringing the
boat that hazardous journey and being the means
of saving eighteen souls was to him an everyday
occurrence."

Such is the chief engineer's testimony to the
continuity of the old tradition of the sea, which
made by the work of men has in its turn created
for them their simple ideal of conduct.

CONFIDENCE

1919

I

The seamen hold up the Edifice. They have been
holding it up in the past and they will hold it up
in the future, whatever this future may contain of
logical development, of unforeseen new shapes, of
great promises and of dangers still unknown.

It is not an unpardonable stretching of the
truth to say that the British Empire rests on
transportation. I am speaking now naturally of
the sea, as a man who has Hved on it for many
years, at a time, too, when on sighting a vessel
on the horizon of any of the great oceans it was
perfectly safe to bet any reasonable odds on her
being a British ship — with the certitude of making
a pretty good thing of it at the end of the voyage.

I have tried to convey here in popular terms

the strong impression remembered from my young

days. The Red Ensign prevailed on the high seas

to such an extent that one always experienced a

slight shock on seeing some other combination of

colours blow out at the peak or flag-pole of any

chance encounter in deep water. In the long run

271

272 CONFIDENCE

the persistence of the visual fact forced upon the
mind a half-unconscious sense of its inner signi-
ficance. We have all heard of the well-known
view that trade follows the flag. And that is not
always true. There is also this truth that the
flag, in normal conditions, represents commerce
to the eye and understanding of the average man.
This is a truth, but it is not the whole truth. In
its numbers and in its unfailing ubiquity, the
British Red Ensign, under which naval actions too
have been fought, adventures entered upon and
sacrifices offered, represented in fact something
more than the prestige of a great trade.

The flutter of that piece of red bunting showered
sentiment on the nations of the earth. I will not
venture to say that in every case that sentiment
was of a friendly nature. Of hatred, half concealed
or concealed not at all, this is not the place to
speak; and indeed the little I have seen of it about
the world was tainted with stupidity and seemed
to confess in its very violence the extreme poorness
of its case. But generally it was more in the nature
of envious wonder qualified by a half-concealed
admiration.

That flag, which but for the Union Jack in the
corner might have been adopted by the most
radical of revolutions, affirmed in its numbers the
stability of purpose, the continuity of effort and
the greatness of Britain's opportunity pursued

CONFIDENCE 273

steadily in the order and peace of the world: that
world which for twenty-five years or so after 1870
may be said to have been living in holy calm and
hushed silence with only now and then a slight
clink of metal, as if in some distant part of man-
kind's habitation some restless body had stumbled
over a heap of old armour.

II

We who have learned by now what a world-war is
Hke may be excused for considering the disturb-
ances of that period as insignificant brawls, mere
hole-and-corner scuffles. In the world, which
memory depicts as so wonderfully tranquil all
over, it was the sea yet that was the safest place.
And the Red Ensign, commercial, industrial, his-
toric, pervaded the sea! Assertive only by itsH
numbers, highly significant, and, under its char- /
acter of a trade emblem, nationally expressive, it/
was symbohc of old and new ideas, of conservatism!
and progress, of routine and enterprise, of drudgery!
and adventure — and of a certain easy-going
optimism that would have appeared the Father
of Sloth itself if it had not been so stubbornly,
so everlastingly active.

The unimaginative, hard-working men, great
and small, who served this flag afloat and ashore,
nursed dumbly a mysterious sense of its greatness,
s

274 CONFIDENCE

It sheltered magnificently their vagabond labours
under the sleepless eye of the sun. It held up
the Edifice. But it crowned it too. This is not
the extravagance of a mixed metaphor. It is the
sober expression of a not very complex truth.
Within that double function the national life
that flag represented so well went on in safety,
assured of its daily crust of bread for which we
all pray and without which we would have to give
up faith, hope and charity, the intellectual con-
quests of our minds and the sanctified strength
of our labouring arms. I may permit myself to
speak of it in these terms because as a matter of
fact it was on that very symbol that I had founded
my hfe and (as I have said elsewhere in a moment
of outspoken gratitude) had known for many years
no other roof above my head.

In those days that symbol was not particularly
regarded. Superficially and definitely it repre-
sented but one of the forms of national activity
rather remote from the close-knit organisations
of other industries, a kind of toil not immediately
under the public eye. It was of its Navy that the
nation, looking out of the windows of its world-
wide Edifice, was proudly aware. And that was
but fair. The Navy is the armed man at the gate.
An existence depending upon the sea must be
guarded with a jealous, sleepless vigilance, for
the sea is but a fickle friend.

CONFIDENCE 275

It had provoked conflicts, encouraged ambitions,
and had lured some nations to destruction — as we
know. He — man or people — who, boasting of long
years of familiarity with the sea, neglects the
strength and cunning of his right hand is a fool.
The pride and trust of the nation in its Navy so
strangely mingled with moments of neglect, caused
by a particularly thick-headed idealism, is per-
fectly justified. It is also very proper: for it is
good for a body of men conscious of a great re-
sponsibihty to feel themselves recognised, if only
in that falHble, imperfect and often irritating way
in which recognition is sometimes offered to the
deserving.

But the Merchant Service had never to suffer
from that sort of irritation. No recognition was
thrust on it offensively, and, truth to say, it did
not seem to concern itself unduly with the claims
of its own obscure merit. It had no consciousness.
It had no words. It had no time. To these busy/
men their work was but the ordinary labour of/
earning a living; their duties in their ever-recur-
ring round had, like the sun itself, the common-
ness of daily things ; their individual fidelity was
not so much united as merely co-ordinated by
an aim that shone with no spiritual lustre. The)T
were everyday men. They were that, eminently.!
When the great opportunity came to them to hnkl
arms in response to a supreme call they received I

276 CONFIDENCE

it with characteristic simplicity, incorporating self-
sacrifice into the texture of their common task,
and, as far as emotion went, framing the horror
of mankind's catastrophic time within the rigid
rules of their professional conscience. And who
can say that they could have done better than
this ?

Such was their past both remote and near. It
has been stubbornly consistent, and as this con-
sistency was based upon the character of men
fashioned by a very old tradition, there is no doubt
that it will endure. Such changes as came into the
sea life have been for the main part mechanical
and affecting only the material conditions of that
inbred consistency. That men don't change is a
profound truth. They don't change because it is
not necessary for them to change even if they
could accomplish that miracle. It is enough for
them to be infinitely adaptable — as the last four
years have abundantly proved.

Ill

Thus one may await the future without undue
excitement and with unshaken confidence. Whether
the hues of sunrise are angry or benign, gorgeous
or sinister, we shall always have the same sky
over our heads. Yet by a kindly dispensation of

CONFIDENCE 277

Providence the human faculty of astonishment
will never lack food. What could be more sur-
prising for instance, than the calm invitation to
Great Britain to discard the force and protection
of its Navy? It has been suggested, it has been
proposed — I don't know whether it has been
pressed. Probably not much. For if the excur-
sions of audacious folly have no bounds that
human eye can see, reason has the habit of never
straying very far away from its throne.

It is not the first time in history that excited
voices have been heard urging the warrior still
panting from the fray to fling his tried weapons
on the altar of peace, for they would be needed no
more ! And such voices have been, in undying hope
or extreme weariness, Hstened to sometimes. But
not for long. After all every sort of shouting is a
transitory thing. It is the grim silence of facts
that remains.

The British Merchant Service has been chal-
lenged in its supremacy before. It will be chal-
lenged again. It may be even asked menacingly
in the name of some humanitarian doctrine or
some empty ideal to step down voluntarily from
that place which it has managed to keep for so
many years. But I imagine that it wall take more
than words of brotherly love or brotherly anger
(which, as is well known, is the worst kind of
anger) to drive British seamen, armed or unarmed,

278 CONFIDENCE

from the seas. Firm in this indestructible if not
easily explained conviction, I can allow myself
to think placidly of that long, long future which
I shall not see.

My confidence rests on the hearts of men who
do not change, though they may forget many
things for a time and even forget to be themselves
in a moment of false enthusiasm. But of that I
am not afraid. It will not be for long. I know the
men. Through the kindness of the Admiralty
(which, let me confess here in a white sheet, I
repaid by the basest ingratitude) I was per-
mitted during the war to renew my contact
with the British seamen of the merchant service.
It is to their generosity in recognising me under
the shore rust of twenty-five years as one of
themselves that I owe one of the deepest emotions
of my hfe. Never for a moment did I feel among
"tEemTlike an idle, wandering ghost from a distant
past. They talked to me seriously, openly, and
with professional precision, of facts, of events, of
implements, I had never heard of in my time;
but the hands I grasped were like the hands
jof the generation which had trained my youth
and is now no more. I recognised the character of
their glances, the accent of their voices. Their
moving tales of modern instances were presented
to me with that peculiar turn of mind flavoured
by the inherited humour and sagacity of the sea.

CONFIDENCE 279

I don't know what the seaman of the future will
be Hke. He may have to live all his days with a
telephone tied up to his head and bristle all over
with scientific antennae like a figure in a fantastic
tale. But he jwill always be the man revealed to
us lately, immutable_in^his_sli^hi_:v^ri^ like
the closed path of this planet of ours_oiL which he

must find his exact pn.'=;itinn nnrp^ at thf- very

least, in every:_tweaty-four. hours.

The^greatest desideratum of a sailor's lifeis_to ^^><^
be_*^ certain, ^fjkis positioru" It is a source of
great worry at times, but I don't think that it
need be so at this time. Yet even the best posi-
tion has its dangers on account of the fickleness of
the elements. But I think that, left untrammelled
to the individual effort of its creators and to the
collective spirit of its servants, the British Mer-
chant Service will manage to maintain its position
on this restless and watery globe.

FLIGHT

1917

To begin at the end, I will say that the " landing "
surprised me by a slight and very characteristically
" dead " sort of shock.

I may fairly call myself an amphibious creature.
A good half of my active existence has been passed
in familiar contact with salt water, and I was
aware, theoretically, that water is not an elastic
body: but it was only then that I acquired the
absolute conviction of the fact. I remember
distinctly the thought flashing through my head:
'' By Jove! it isn't elastic! " Such is the illumin-
ating force of a particular experience.

This landing (on the water of the North Sea)

was effected in a Short biplane after one hour and

twenty minutes in the air. I reckon every minute

Hke a miser counting his hoard, for, if what I've

got is mine, I am not likely now to increase the

tale. That feeling is the effect of age. It strikes

me as I write that, when next time I leave the

surface of this globe, it won't be to soar bodily

above it in the air. Quite the contrary. And I am

not thinking of a submarine either. . . .

281

282 FLIGHT

But let us drop this dismal strain and go back
logically to the beginning. I must confess that
I started on that flight in a state — I won't say
of fury, but of a most intense irritation. I don't
remember ever feeling so annoyed in my Hfe.

It came about in this way. Two or three days
before, I had been invited to lunch at an R.N.A.S.
station, and was made to feel very much at home
by the nicest lot of quietly interesting young men
it had ever been my good fortune to meet. Then
I was taken into the sheds. I walked respectfully
round and round a lot of machines of all kinds, and
the more I looked at them the more I felt somehow
that for all the effect they produced on me they
might have been so many land-vehicles of an
eccentric design. So I said to Commander 0.,
who very kindly was conducting me: "This is
all very fine, but to realise what one is looking at,
one must have been up."

He said at once : " I'll give you a flight to-
morrow if you Hke."

- I postulated that it should be none of those
" ten minutes in the air " affairs. I wanted a
real business flight. Commander 0. assured me
that I would get " awfully bored," but I declared
that I was willing to take that risk. " Very well,"
he said. " Eleven o'clock to-morrow. Don't be
late."

I am sorry to say I was about two minutes late,

FLIGHT 283

which was enough, however, for Commander O.
to greet me with a shout from a great distance:
"Oh! You are coming, then ! "

" Of course I am coming," I yelled indignantly.

He hurried up to me. " All right. There's your
machine, and here's your pilot. Come along."

A lot of officers closed round me, rushed me into
a hut: two of them began to button me into the
coat, two more were ramming a cap on my head,
others stood around with goggles, with binoculars.
... I couldn't understand the necessity of such
haste. We weren't going to chase Fritz. There was
no sign of Fritz anywhere in the blue. Those dear
boys did not seem to notice my age — fifty-eight,
if a day — ^nor my infirmities — a gouty subject for
years. This disregard was very flattering, and I
tried to live up to it, but the pace seemed to me
terrific. They galloped me across a vast expanse
of open ground to the water's edge.

The machine on its carriage seemed as big as a
cottage, and much more imposing. My young
pilot went up hke a bird. There was an idle, able-
bodied ladder loafing against a shed within fifteen
feet of me, but as nobody seemed to notice it, I
recommended myself mentally to Heaven and
started cHmbing after the pilot. The close view
of the real fragility of that rigid structure startled
me considerably, while Commander O. discomposed
me still more by shouting repeatedly : *' Don't put

284 FLIGHT

your foot there ! " I didn't know where to put my
foot. There was a sHght crack; I heard some
swear-words below me, and then with a supreme
effort I rolled in and dropped into a basket-chair,
absolutely winded. A small crowd of mechanics
and officers were looking up at me from the ground,
and while I gasped visibly I thought to myself
that they would be sure to put it down to sheer
nervousness. But I hadn't breath enough in my
body to stick my head out and shout down to
them:

" You know, it isn't that at all! "

Generally I try not to think of my age and
infirmities. They are not a cheerful subject. But
I was never so angry and disgusted with them as
during that minute or so before the machine took
the water. As to my feeHngs in the air, those who
will read these fines will know their own, which
are so much nearer the mind and the heart than
any writings of an unprofessional can be. At
first all my faculties were absorbed and as if
neutrahsed by the sheer novelty of the situation.
The first to emerge was the sense of security so
much more perfect than in any small boat I've
ever been in; the, as it were, material, stillness,
and immobility (though it was a bumpy day). I
very soon ceased to hear the roar of the wind and
engines — unless, indeed, some cylinders missed,
when I became acutely aware of that. Within the

FLIGHT 285

rigid spread of the powerful planes, so strangely
motionless, I had sometimes the illusion of sitting
as if by enchantment in a block of suspended
marble. Even while looking over at the aero-
plane's shadow running prettily over land and sea,
I had the impression of extreme slowness. I imagine
that had she suddenly nose-dived out of control,
I would have gone to the final smash without a
single additional heartbeat. I am sure I would
not have known. It is doubtless otherwise with
the man in control.

But there was no dive, and I returned to earth
(after an hour and twenty minutes) without having
felt " bored " for a single second. I descended (by
the ladder) thinking that I would never go flying
again. No, never any more — lest its mysterious
fascination, whose invisible wing had brushed my
heart up there, should change to unavailing regret
in a man too old for its glory.

SOME REFLECTIONS
ON THE LOSS OF THE riTANIC

1912

It is with a certain bitterness that one must admit
to oneself that the late S.S. Titanic had a '' good
press." It is perhaps because I have no great
practice of daily newspapers (I have never seen
so many of them together lying about my room)
that the white spaces and the big lettering of the
headlines have an incongruously festive air to my
eyes, a disagreeable effect of a feverish exploita-
tion of a sensational God-send. And if ever a loss
at sea fell under the definition, in the terms of a
bill of lading, of Act of God, this one does, in its
magnitude, suddenness and severity; and in the
chastening influence it should have on the self-
confidence of mankind.

I say this with all the seriousness the occasion
demands, though I have neither the competence
nor the wish to take a theological view of this
great misfortune, sending so many souls to their
last account. It is but a natural reflection. Another
one flowing also from the phraseology of bills of

lading (a bill of lading is a shipping document

287

288 LOSS OF THE IIIANIC

limiting in certain of its clauses the liability of
the carrier) is that the " King's Enemies " of a
more or less overt sort are not altogether sorry
that this fatal mishap should strike the prestige
of the greatest Merchant Service of the world. I
believe that not a thousand miles from these
shores certain public prints have betrayed in
gothic letters their satisfaction — to speak plainly
— by rather ill-natured comments.

In what light one is to look at the action of the
American Senate is more difficult to say. From
a certain point of view the sight of the august
senators of a great Power rushing to New York
and beginning to bally and badger the luckless
" Yamsi " — on the very quay-side so to speak —
s, seems to furnish the Shakespearian touch of the
comic to the real tragedy of the fatuous drowning
of all these people who to the last moment put
their trust in mere bigness, in the reckless affirma-
tions of commercial men and mere technicians
and in the irresponsible paragraphs of the news-
papers booming these ships! Yes, a grim touch
of comedy. One asks oneself what these men are
after, with this very provincial display of authority.
I beg my friends in the United States pardon for
calling these zealous senators men. I don't wish
to be disrespectful. They may be of the stature
of demi-gods for all I know, but at that great
distance from the shores of effete Europe and in

LOSS OF THE TITANIC 289

the presence of so many guileless dead, their size
seems diminished from this side. What are they
after ? What is there for them to find out ? We
know what had happened. The ship scraped
her side against a piece of ice, and sank after
floating for two hours and a half, taking a lot of
people down with her. What more can they find
out from the unfair badgering of the unhappy
" Yamsi," or the ruffianly abuse of the same.

" Yamsi," I should explain, is a mere code ad-
dress, and I use it here symboHcally. I have seen
commerce pretty close. I know what it is worth,
and I have no particular regard for commercial
magnates, but one must protest against these,
Bumble-hke proceedings. Is it indignation at
the loss of so many lives which is at work here ?
Well; the American railroads kill very many
people during one single year, I dare say. Then
why don't these dignitaries come down on the
presidents of their own railroads, of which
one can't say whether they are mere means of
transportation or a sort of gambhng game for
the use of American plutocrats. Is it only an
ardent and, upon the whole, praiseworthy desire
for information ? But the reports of the inquiry
tell us that the august senators, though raising
a lot of questions testifying to the complete
innocence and even blankness of their minds, are
unable to understand what the second officer is

290 LOSS OF THE TI7ANIC

saying to them. We are so informed by the press
from the other side. Even such a simple expres-
sion as that one of the look-out men was stationed
in the '' eyes of the ship " was too much for the
senators of the land of graphic expression. What
it must have been in the more recondite matters
I won't even try to think, because I have no mind
for smiles just now. They were greatly exercised
about the sound of explosions heard when half
the ship was under water already. Was there
one ? Were there two ? They seemed to be smelling
a rat there! Has not some charitable soul told
them (what even schoolboys who read sea stories
know) that when a ship sinks from a leak like
this, a deck or two is always blown up; and
that when a steamship goes down by the head,
the boilers may, and often do break adrift with a
sound which resembles the sound of an explosion ?
And they may, indeed, explode, for all I know. In
the only case I have seen of a steamship sinking
there was such a sound, but I didn't dive down
after her to investigate. She was not of 45,000
tons and declared unsinkable, but the sight was
impressive enough. I shall never forget the muffled,
mysterious detonation, the sudden agitation of the
sea round the slowly raised stern, and to this day
I have in my eye the propeller, seen perfectly still
in its frame against a clear evening sky.

But perhaps the second officer has explained to

LOSS OF THE TITANIC 291

them by this time this and a few other little facts.
Though why an officer of the British merchant
service should answer the questions of any king,
emperor, autocrat, or senator of any foreign power
(as to an event in which a British ship alone was
concerned, and which did not even take place in
the territorial waters of that power) passes my
understanding. The only authority he is bound
to answer is the Board of Trade. But with what"]
face the Board of Trade, which, having made
the regulations for 10,000 ton ships, put its dear |
old bald head under its wing for ten years, |
took it out only to shelve an important report, )
and with a dreary murmur, " Unsinkable," put .'
it back again, in the hope of not being disturbed /
for another ten years, with what face it will be I
putting questions to that man who has done his j
duty, as to the facts of this disaster and as to his \
professional conduct in it — well, I don't know! I
have the greatest respect for our established'^
authorities. I am a discipHned man, and I have a I
natural indulgence for the weaknesses of human '
institutions; but I will own that at times I have
regretted their — how shall I say it ? — their impon-
derability. A Board of Trade — what is it ? A
Board of ... I beheve the Speaker of the Irish
ParHament is one of the members of it. A ghost.
Less than that; as yet a mere memory. An office
with adequate and no doubt comfortable furnitujie

292 LOSS OF THE TITANIC

and a lot of perfectly irresponsible gentlemen who
exist packed in its equable atmosphere softly, as
if in a lot of cotton-wool, and with no care in the
world; for there can be no care without personal
responsibility — such, for instance, as the seamen
have — those seamen from whose mouths this
irresponsible institution can take away the bread
— as a disciplinary measure. Yes — it's all that. And
what more ? The name of a politician — a party
man! Less than nothing; a mere void without
as much as a shadow of responsibility cast into
it from that light in which move the masses of
men who work, who deal in things and face the
^reahties — not the words — of this Hfe.

Years ago I remember overhearing two genuine
shellbacks of the old type commenting on a ship's
officer, who, if not exactly incompetent, did not
commend himself to their severe judgment of
accomplished sailor-men. Said one, resuming and
concluding the discussion in a funnily judicial tone :
'' The Board of Trade must have been drunk
when they gave him his certificate."
f I confess that this notion of the Board of Trade
' as an entity having a brain which could be over-
come by the fumes of strong liquor charmed me
exceedingly. For then it would have been unHke
the Hmited companies of which some exasperated
wit has once said that they had no souls to be
saved and no bodies to be kicked, and thus were

LOSS OF THE TITANIC 293

free in this world and the next from all the
effective sanctions of conscientious conduct. But,
unfortunately, the picturesque pronouncement
overheard by me was only a characteristic sally of
an annoyed sailor. The Board of Trade is com-
posed of bloodless departments. It has no Hmbs ;
and no physiognomy, or else at the forthcoming
inquiry it might have paid to the victims of the
Titanic disaster the small tribute of a blush. \j
ask myself whether the Marine Department of
the Board of Trade did really believe, when they
decided to shelve the report on equipment for a
time, that a ship of 45,000 tons, that any ship,
could be made practically indestructible by means
of watertight bulkheads ? It seems incredible to
anybody who had ever reflected upon the properties
of material, such as wood or steel. You can't,
let builders say what they like, make a ship of
such dimensions as strong proportionately as a
much smaller one. The shocks our old whalers
had to stand amongst the heavy floes in Baffin's
Bay were perfectly staggering, notwithstanding
the most skilful handling, and yet they lasted for
years. The Titanic^ if one may believe the last
reports, has only scraped against a piece of ice
which, I suspect, was not an enormously bulky
and comparatively easily seen berg, but the low
edge of a floe — and sank. Leisurely enough, God
knows — and here the advantage of bulkheads

294 LOSS OF THE TITANIC

comes in — for time is a great friend, a good helper
— though in this lamentable case these bulkheads
served only to prolong the agony of the passengers
who could not be saved. But she sank, causing,
apart from the sorrow and the pity of the loss of
so many lives, a sort of surprised consternation
that such a thing should have happened at all.
Why? You build a 45,000 tons hotel of thin steel
plates to secure the patronage of, say, a couple of
thousand rich people (for if it had been for the
emigrant trade alone, there would have been no
such exaggeration of mere size), you decorate it
in the style of the Pharaohs or in the Louis Quinze
style — I don't know which — and to please the
aforesaid fatuous handful of individuals, who have
more money than they know what to do with,
and to the applause of two continents, you launch
that mass with two thousand people on board at
twenty-one knots across the sea — a perfect exhibi-
tion of the modern blind trust in mere material
and appliances. And then this happens. General

I uproar. The blind trust in material and appliances
has received a terrible shock. I will say nothing

I of the credulity which accepts any statement which
specialists, technicians and office-people are pleased
to make, whether for purposes of gain or glory.
You stand there astonished and hurt in your
profoundest sensibilities. But what else under
the circumstances could you expect ?

u

LOSS OF THE TITANIC 295

For my part I could much sooner beHeve in an
unsinkable ship of 3,000 tons than in one of 40,000
tons. It is one of those things that stand to reason.
You can't increase the thickness of scanthng and
plates indefinitely. And the mere weight of this
bigness is an added disadvantage. In readmg the!
reports, the first reflection which occurs to one is
that, if that luckless ship had been a couple of
hundred feet shorter, she would have probably
gone clear of the danger. But then, perhaps,
she could not have had a swimming bath and a
French cafe. That, of course, is a serious considera-
tion. I am well aware that those responsible for
her short and fatal existence ask us in desolate
accents to beUeve that if she had hit end on she
would have survived. Which, by a sort of coy
impHcation, seems to mean that it was all the
fault of the officer of the watch (he is dead now)
for trying to avoid the obstacle. We shall have"?
presently, in deference to commercial and indus-
trial interests, a new kind of seamanship. A very
new and " progressive " kind. If you see anythingj
in the way, by no means try to avoid it; smash\
afit full tilt. And then— and then only you shall \
see the triumph of material, of clever contrivances,
of the whole box of engineering tricks in fact, and
cover with glory a commercial concern of the most
unmitigated sort, a great Trust, and a great ship-
building yard, justly famed for the super-excellence

296 LOSS OF THE TITANIC

of its material and workmanship. Unsinkable!
Sec ? I told you she was unsinkable, if only handled
in accordance with the new seamanship. Every-
thing's in that. And, doubtless, the Board of
Trade, if properly approached, would consent to
give the needed instructions to its examiners of
Masters and Mates. Behold the examination-room
of the future. Enter to the grizzled examiner a
young man of modest aspect : " Are you well up
in modern seamanship ? " ''I hope so, sir." " H'm,
let's see. You are at night on the bridge in charge
of a 150,000 tons ship, with a motor track, organ-
loft, etc, etc., with a full cargo of passengers, a
full crew of 1,500 cafe waiters, two sailors and a
boy, three collapsible boats as per Board of Trade
regulations, and going at your three-quarter speed
of, say, about forty knots. You perceive suddenly
right ahead, and close to, something that looks
Hke a large ice-floe. \^'Tiat would you do ? " '' Put
the helm amidships." '' Very well. Why?" "In
order to hit end on." " On what grounds should
you endeavour to hit end on ? " " Because we are
taught by our builders and masters that the
heavier the smash, the smaller the damage, and
because the requirements of material should be
attended to."

And so on and so on. The new seamanship :
when in doubt try to ram fairly — whatever's before
you. Very simple. If only the Titanic had rammed

LOSS OF THE i:iTANIC 297

that piece of ice (which was not a monstrous berg)
fairly, every puffing paragraph would have been
vindicated in the eyes of the credulous pubHc
which pays. But would it have been ? Well, I
doubt it. I am well aware that in the eighties the
steamship Arizona, one of the " greyhounds of the
ocean " in the jargon of that day, did run bows on
against a very unmistakable iceberg, and managed
to get into port on her collision bulkhead. But the
Arizona was not, if I remember rightly, 5,000 tons
register, let alone 45,000, and she was not going
at twenty knots per hour. I can't be perfectly
certain at this distance of time, but her sea-speed
could not have been more than fourteen at the
outside. Both these facts made for safety. And,
even if she had been engined to go twenty knots,
there would not have been behind that speed the
enormous mass, so difficult to check in its impetus,
the terrific weight of which is bound to do damage
to itself or others at the sHghtest contact.

I assure you it is not for the vain pleasure of
talking about my own poor experiences, but only
to illustrate my point, that I will relate here a
very unsensational little incident I witnessed now
rather more than twenty years ago in Sydney,
N.S.W. Ships were beginning then to grow bigger
year after year, though, of course, the present
dimensions were not even dreamt of. I was stand-
ing on the Circular Quay with a Sydney pilot

298 LOSS OF THE TITANIC

watching a big mail steamship of one of our best-
known companies being brought alongside. We
admired her hues, her noble appearance, and were
impressed by her size as well, though her length, I
imagine, was hardly half that of the Titanic.

She came into the Cove (as that part of the
harbour is called), of course very slowly, and at
some hundred feet or so short of the quay she lost
her way. That quay was then a wooden one, a fine
structure of mighty piles and stringers bearing a
roadway — a thing of great strength. The ship,
as I have said before, stopped moving when some
hundred feet from it. Then her engines were rung
on slow ahead, and immediately rung off again.
The propeller made just about five turns, I should
say. She began to move, steahng on, so to speak,
without a ripple; coming alongside with the
utmost gentleness. I went on looking her over,
very much interested, but the man with me, the
pilot, muttered under his breath: '^ Too much,
too much." His exercised judgment had warned
him of what I did not even suspect. But I beheve
that neither of us was exactly prepared for what
happened. There was a faint concussion of the
ground under our feet, a groaning of piles, a
snapping of great iron bolts, and with a sound
of ripping and splintering, as when a tree is blown
^down by the wind, a great strong piece of wood,
a baulk of squared timber, was displaced several

LOSS OF THE TITANIC 299

feet as if by enchantment. I looked at my
companion in amazement. " I could not have
beheved it," I declared. " No," he said. " You
would not have thought she would have cracked
an egg — eh ? "

I certainly wouldn't have thought that. He
shook his head, and added: "Ah! These great,
big things, they want some handHng."

Some months afterwards I was back in Sydney.
The same pilot brought me in from sea. And I
found the same steamship, or else another as hke
her as two peas, lying at anchor not far from us.
The pilot told me she had arrived the day before,
and that he was to take her alongside to-morrow.
I reminded him jocularly of the damage to the
quay. " Oh! " he said, " we are not allowed now
to bring them in under their own steam. We are
using tugs."

A very wise regulation. And this iajiiy point —
that size is to a certain extent an element of weak-
ness. The bigger the ship, the more deUcately she
must be handled. Here is a contact which, in the
pilot's own words, you wouldn't think could have
cracked an egg; with the astonishing result of
something hke eighty feet of good strong wooden
quay shaken loose, iron bolts snapped, a baulk of
stout timber sphntered. Now, suppose that quay
had been of granite (as surely it is now) — or,
instead of the quay, if there had been, say, a

300 LOSS OF THE TITANIC

North Atlantic fog there, with a full-grown iceberg
in it awaiting the gentle contact of a ship groping
its way along bHndfold? Something would have
been hurt, but it would not have been the iceberg.
' Apparently, there is a point in development when
it ceases to be a true progress — in trade, in games,
in the marvellous handiwork of men, and even in
their demands and desires and aspirations of the
mxoral and mental kind. There is a point wheii
progress, to remain a real advance, must change
sHghtly_the direction of its line. But this is a -wide
question. What I wanted to point out here is —
that the old Arizona, the marvel of her day, was
proportionately stronger, handier, better equipped,
than this triumph of modern naval architecture,
the loss of which, in common parlance, will remain
the sensation of this year. The clatter of the
presses has been worthy of the tonnage, of the
preliminary paeans of trium^ph round that vanished
huIl,^of the reckless statements, and elaborate
descriptions of its ornate splendour. A great
babble of news (and what sort of news too, good
heavens!) and eager comment has arisen around
this catastrophe, though it seems to me that a
less strident note would have been more becoming
in the presence of so many victims left struggHng
\on the sea, ofJ[iv^s_jniserajyy_tl^^
LOthing, or worse than nothing: for false standards
>f achievementg_tQ_satisfy a vulgar demand of _a

LOSS OF THE TITANIC 301

few moneyed people for a banal hotel luxury —
tke only one they can understand — and because

the big ship pays, in one way. _or- anolhex j in

money or in advertising value.

It is in more ways than one a very ugly business,
and a mere scrape along the ship's side, so slight
that, if reports are to be believed, it did not inter-
rupt a card party in the gorgeously fitted (but in
chaste style) smoking-room — or was it in the
delightful French cafe ? — is enough to bring on the
exposure. All the people on board existed under
a sense of false security. How false, it has beeil
sufficiently demonstrated. And the fact which
seems undoubted, that some of them actuallv
were reluctant to enter the boats when told to)
do so, shows the strength of that falsehood.^
Incidentally, it shows also the sort of discipline
on board these ships, the sort of hold kept on the
passengers in the face of the unforgiving sea.
These people seemed to imagine it an optional
matter: whereas the order to leave the ship
should be an order of the sternest character, to
be obeyed unquestioningly and promptly by every
one on board, with men to enforce it at once,
and to carry it out methodically and swiftly. And
it is no use to say it cannot be done, for it can. It
has been done. The only requisite is manageable-
ness of the ship herself and of the numbers she
carries on board. That is the great thing which

302 LOSS OF THE TITANIC

makes for safety. A commander should be able
to hold his ship and everything on board of her in
the hollow of his hand, as it were. But with the
modern fooHsh trust in material, and with those
floating hotels, this has become impossible. A
man may do his best, but he cannot succeed in a
task which from greed, or more likely from sheer
stupidity, has been made too great for anybody^s
strength.

The readers of The English Review^ who cast a
friendly eye nearly six years ago on my Reminis-
cenceSj and know how much the merchant service,
ships and men, has been to me, will understand my
indignation that those men of whom (speaking in
no sentimental phrase, but in the very truth of
feeling) I can't even now think otherwise than as
brothers, have been put by their commercial em-
ployers in the impossibility to perform efficiently
their plain duty; and this from motives which I
shall not enumerate here, but whose intrinsic
unworthiness is plainly revealed by the greatness,
the miserable greatness, of that disaster. Some
of them have perished. To die for commerce is
hard enough, but to go under that sea we have
been trained to combat, with a sense of failure in
the supreme duty of one's calling is indeed a bitter
fate. Thus they are gone, and the responsibiUty
remains with the living who will have no difficulty
in replacing them by others, just as good, at the

LOSS OF THE TITANIC 303

same wages. It was their bitter fate. But I, who
can look at some arduous years when their duty
was my duty too, and their feehngs were my
feehngs, can remember some of us who once upon
a time were more fortunate.

It is of them that I would talk a little, for my
own comfort partly, and also because I am stick-
ing all the time to my subject to illustrate my
point, the point of manageableness which I have
raised just now. Since the memory of the lucky
Arizona has been evoked by others than myself,
and made use of by me for my own purpose, let
me call up the ghost of another ship of that distant
day whose less lucky destiny inculcates another
lesson making for TCiy argument. The Douro, a
ship belonging to the Royal Mail Steam Packet
Company,- was rather less than one-tenth the
measurement of the Titanic. Yet, strange as it
may appear to jth^ineffable_hotel exquisites who
form the bulk_ of _ the first-class Cross-Atlantic
Passengers, people of position and wealth and
refinement did not consider it an intolerable
hardship to travel in her, even all the way from
South America; this being the service she was
engaged upon. Of her speed I know nothing, but
it must have been the average of the period, and
the decorations of her saloons were, I dare say,
quite up to the mark; but I doubt if her birth
had been boastfully paragraphed all round the

304 LOSS OF THE TI7ANIC

Press, because that was not the fashion of the
time. She was not a mass of material gorgeously
furnished and upholstered. She was a ship. And
she was not, in the apt words of an article by
Commander_C_Crutchley, R.N.R., which I have
just read, '* run by a sort of hotel syndicate
composed of the Chief Engineer, the Purser, and
the_Captain,'^ as these monstrous Atlantic ferries
are. She was really commanded, manned, and
equipped as a ship meant to keep the sea : a ship
first and last in the fullest meaning of the term, as
the fact I am going to relate will show.

She was oif the Spanish coast, homeward bound,
and fairly full, just Hke the Titanic; and fur-
ther, the proportion of her crew to her passen-
gers, I remember quite well, was very much the
same. The exact number of souls on board I
have forgotten. It might have been nearly three
hundred, certainly not more. The night was moon-
lit, but hazy, the weather fine with a heavy swell
running from the westward, which means that she
must have been roUing a great deal, and in that
respect the conditions for her were worse than
in the case of the Titanic. Some time either just
before or just after midnight, to the best of my
recollection, she was run into amidships and at
right angles by a large steamer which after the
blow backed out, and, herself apparently damaged,
remained motionless at some distance.

LOSS OF THE TITANIC 305

My recollection is that the Douro remained afloat
after the collision for fifteen minutes or there-
abouts. It might have been twenty, but certainly
something under the half-hour. In that time the
boats were lowered, all the passengers put into them,
and the lot shoved off. There was no time to do
anything more. All the crew of the Douro went down
with her, Hterally without a murmur. When she
went she plunged bodily down Hke a stone. The only
members of the ship's company who survived were
the third officer, who was from the first ordered to
take charge of the boats, and the seamen told off
to man them, two in each. Nobody else was picked
up. A quartermaster, one of the saved in the way
of duty, with whom I talked a month or so after-
wards, told me that they pulled up to the spot, but
could neither see a head nor hear the faintest cry.

But I have forgotten. A passenger was drowned.
She was a lady's maid who, frenzied with terror,
refused to leave the ship. One of the boats waited
near by till the chief officer, finding himself
absolutely unable to tear the girl away from the
rail to which she clung with a frantic grasp,
ordered the boat away out of danger. My quarter-
master told me that he spoke over to them in his
ordinary voice, and this was the last sound heard
before the ship sank.

The rest is silence. I daresay there was the
usual official inquiry, but who cared for it ? That

3o6 LOSS OF THE TITANIC

sort of thing speaks for itself with no uncertain
voice; though the papers, I remember, gave the
event no space to speak of: no large headlines —
no headlines at all. You see it was not the fashion
at the time. A seaman-like piece of work, of which
one cherishes the old memory at this juncture
more than ever before. She was a ship commanded,
manned, equipped — ^not a sort of marine Ritz,
proclaimed unsinkable and sent adrift with its
casual population upon the sea, without enough
boats, without enough seamen (but with a Parisian
cafe and four hundred of poor devils of waiters)
to meet dangers which, let the engineers say what
they like, lurk always amongst the waves; sent
with a blind trust in mere material, Hght-heartedly,
to a most miserable, most fatuous disaster.

And there are, too, many ugly developments
about this tragedy. The rush of the senatorial
inquiry before the poor wretches escaped from
the jaws of death had time to draw breath, the
vituperative abuse of a man no more guilty than
others in this matter, and the suspicion of this
aimless fuss being a political move to get home
on the M.T. Company, into which, in common
parlance, the United States Government has got
its knife, I don't pretend to understand why,
though with the rest of the world I am aware of
the fact. Perhaps there may be an excellent and
worthy reason for it; but I venture to suggest

LOSS OF THE TITANIC 307

that to take advantage of so many pitiful corpses,
is not pretty. And the exploiting of the mere
sensation on the other side is not pretty in its
wealth of heartless inventions. Neither is the
welter of Marconi lies which has not been sent
vibrating without some reason, for which it would
be nauseous to inquire too closely. And the
calumnious, baseless, gratuitous, circumstantial He
charging poor Captain Smith with desertion of his
post by means of suicide is the vilest and most
ugly thing of all in this outburst of journalistic
enterprise, without feeHng, without honour, with-
out decency. - —
But all this has its moral. And that other
sinking which I have related here and to the
memory of which a seaman turns with relief and
thankfulness has its moral too. Yes, material may
fail, and men, too, may fail sometimes; but more
often men, when they are given the chance, will
prove themselves truer than steel, that wonderful
thin steel fr^m which the sides and the bulkheaids
of our modern sea-leviathans are made.

CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE ADMIR-
ABLE INQUIRY INTO THE LOSS OF

THE rirANic

1912

1 HAVE been taken to task by a friend of mine on
the " other side " for my strictures on Senator
Smith's investigation into the loss of the Titanic, in
the number of The English Review for May, 191 2.
I will admit that the motives of the investigation
may have been excellent, and probably were;
my criticism bore mainly on matters of form and
also on the point of efficiency. In that respect I
have nothing to retract. The Senators of the
Commission had absolutely no knowledge and no
practice to guide them in the conduct of such an
investigation; and this fact gave an air of unreaHty
to their zealous exertions. I think that even in
the United States there is some regret that this
zeal of theirs was not tempered by a large dose
of wisdom. It is fitting that people who rush with
such ardour to the work of putting questions to
men yet gasping from a narrow escape should have,
I wouldn't say a tincture of technical information,
but enough knowledge of the subject to direct the

3^9

3IO THE TITANIC INQUIRY

trend of their inquiry. The newspapers of two
continents have noted the remarks of the President
of the Senatorial Commission with comments which
I will not reproduce here, having a scant respect
for the " organs of pubhc opinion," as they fondly
beUeve themselves to be. The absolute value of
their remarks was about as great as the value of
the investigation they either mocked at or extolled.
To the United States Senate I did not intend to be
disrespectful. I have for that body, of which one
hears mostly in connection with tariffs, as much
reverence as the best of Americans. To manifest
more or less would be an impertinence in a
stranger. I have expressed myself with less
reserve on our Board of Trade. That was done
under the influence of warm feehngs. We were
all feehng warmly on the matter at that time.
But, at any rate, our Board of Trade Inquiry,
conducted by an experienced President, discovered
a very interesting fact on the very second day
of its sitting: the fact that the water-tight doors, in
the bulkheads of that wonder of naval architecture
could be opened down below by any irresponsible
person. Thus the famous closing apparatus on
the bridge, paraded as a device of greater safety,
with its attachments of warning bells, coloured
Hghts, and all these pretty-pretties, was, in the case
of this ship, little better than 3 technical farce*
It is amusing, if anything connected with this

THE TITANIC INQUIRY 311

stupid catastrophe can be amusing, to see the
secretly crestfallen attitude of technicians. They
are the high priests of the modern cult of perfected
material and of mechanical apphances, and would
fain forbid the profane from inquiring into its
mysteries. We are the masters of progress, they
say, and you should remain respectfully silent.
And they take refuge behind their mathematics.
I have the greatest regard for mathematics as
an exercise of mind. It is the only manner of
thinking which approaches the Divine. But mere
calculations, of which these men make so much,
when unassisted by imagination and when they
have gained mastery over common sense, are the
most deceptive exercises of intellect. Two and
two are four, and two are six. That is immutable;
you may trust your soul to that ; but you must be
certain first of your quantities. I know how the
strength of materials can be calculated away, and
also the evidence of one's senses. For it is by some
sort of calculation involving weights and levels
that the technicians responsible for the Titanic
persuaded themselves that a ship not divided by
water-tight compartments could be " unsinkable."
Because, you know, she was not divided. You and
I, and our httle boys, when we want to divide,
say, a box, take care to procure a piece of wood
which will reach from the bottom to the hd.
We know that if it does not reach all the way up,

312 THE 111AN1C INQUIRY

the box will not be divided into two compart-
ments. It will be only partly divided. The T^itanic
was only partly divided. She waj^just sufficiently
divided to^drown some jgoor_deyils like rats in a
trap. It is probable that they would have perished
in any case, but it is a particularly horrible fate
to die boxed up like this. Yes, she was sufficiently
divided for that, but not sufficiently divided to
prevent the water flowing over.

Therefore to a plain man who knows some-
thing of mathematics but is not bemused by
calculations, she was, from the point of view of
" unsinkability," not divided at aU. What would
you say of people who would boast of a fireproof
building, an hotel, for instance, saying, " Oh, we
have it divided by fireproof bulkheads which
would locahse any outbreak," and if you were
to discover on closer inspection that these bulk-
heads closed no more than two-thirds of the
openings they were meant to close, leaving above
an open space through which draught, smoke,
and fire could rush from one end of the building
to the other ? And, furthermore, that those
partitions, being too high to climb over, the
people confined in each menaced compartment
had to stay there and become asphyxiated or
roasted, because no exits to the outside, say to
the roof, had been provided! W^at would you
think of the intelligence or candour of these

THE TITANIC INQUIRY 313

advertising people ? What would you think of
them ? And yet, apart from the obvious difference
in the action of fire and water, the cases are
essentially the same.

It would strike you and me and our little boys
(who are not engineers yet) that to approach — I
won't say attain — somewhere near absolute safety,
the divisions to keep out water should extend from
the bottom right up to the uppermost deck of the
hull, I repeat, the hull, because there are above
the hull the decks of the superstructures of which
we need not take account. And further, as a
provision of the commonest humanity, that each
of these compartments should have a perfectly
independent and free access to that uppermost
deck: that is, into the open. Nothing less will do.
Division by bulkheads that really divide, and free
access to the deck from every water-tight compart-
ment. Then the responsible man in the moment of
danger and in the exercise of his judgment could
close all the doors of these water-tight bulkheads
by whatever clever contrivance has been invented
for the purpose, without a qualm at the awful
thought that he may be shutting up some of his
fellow creatures in a death-trap; that he may be
sacrificing the lives of men who, down there, are
sticking to the posts of duty as the engine-room
staffs of the Merchant Service have never failed
to do. I know very well that the engineers of a

314 THE TITANIC INQUIRY

ship in a moment of emergency are not quaking
for their Hves, but, as far as I have known them,
attend calmly to their duty. We all must die;
but, hang it all, a man ought to be given a chance,
if not for his Hfe, then at least to die decently.
It's bad enough to have to stick down there when
something disastrous is going on and any moment
may be your last; but to be drowned shut up
under deck is too bad. Some men of the Titanic
died like that, it is to be feared. Compartmented,
so to speak. Just think what it means! Nothing
can approach the horror of that fate except being
buried ahve in a cave, or in a mine, or in your
family vault.

So, once more: continuous bulkheads — a clear
way of escape to the deck out of each water-tight
compartment. Nothing less. And if speciahsts,
the precious speciahsts of the sort that builds
" unsinkable ships," tell you that it cannot be
done, don't you believe them. It can be done,
and they are quite clever enough to do it too.
The objections they will raise, however disguised
in the solemn mystery of technical phrases, will
not be technical, but commercial. I assure you
that there is not much mystery about a ship of
that sort. She is a tank. She is a tank ribbed,
joisted, stayed, but she is no greater mystery
than a tank. The Titanic was a tank eight hundred
feet long, fitted as an hotel, with corridors, bed-

THE TITJNIC INQUIRY 315

rooms, halls, and so on (not a very mysterious
arrangement truly), and for the hazards of her
existence I should think about as strong as a
Huntley and Palmer biscuit-tiji. I make this
comparison because Huntley and Palmer biscuit-
tins, being almost a national institution, are
probably known to all my readers. Well, about
that strong, and perhaps not quite so strong.
Just look at the side of such a tin, and then
think of a 50,000 ton ship, and try to imagine
what the thickness of her plates should be to
approach anywhere the relative soHdity of that
biscuit-tin. In my varied and adventurous career
I have been thrilled by the sight of a Huntley
and Palmer biscuit-tin kicked by a mule sky-
high, as the saying is. It came back to earth
smihng, with only a sort of dimple on one of its
cheeks. A proportionately severe blow would
have burst the side of the Titanic or any other
" triumph of modern naval architecture " Hke
brown paper — I am willing to bet.

I am not saying this by way of disparage-
ment. There is reason in things. You can't make
a 50,000 ton ship as strong as a Huntley and
Palmer biscuit-tin. But there is also reason in the
way one accepts facts, and I refuse to be awed by
the size of a tank bigger than any other tank that
ever went afloat to its doom. The people respon-
sible for her, though disconcerted in their hearts

3i6 THE IMANIC INQUIRY

by the exposure of that disaster, are giving them-
selves airs of superiority — priests of an Oracle

^■!H£]!L^^-J^i-i^^2 ^^^ ^^^^ must remain the Oracle.
The assumption is that they are ministers oi
progress*. But the mere increase of size is not
progress. If it were, elephantiasis, which causes
a man's legs to become as large as tree-trunks,
would be a sort of progress, whereas it is nothing
but a very ugly disease. Yet directly this very
disconcerting catastrophe happened, the servants
of the silly Oracle began to cry : " It's no use !
You can't resist progress. The big ship has come
to stay," Well, let her stay on, then, in God's
name! But she isn't a servant of progress in any
sense. She is the servant of commerciaHsm. For
progress, if deahng with the problems of a material
world, has some sort of moral aspect — if only,
say, that of conquest, which has its distinct value
since man is a conquering animal. But bigness is
mere exaggeration. The men responsible for these
big ships have been moved by considerations of
profit to be made by the questionable means of
pandering to an absurd and vulgar demand for
banal luxury — the seaside hotel luxury. One even
asks oneself whether there was such a demand ? It
is incon_ceivable to think that there are people
who can't spend five days of their life withou^^
suite of apartments, cafes, bands, and such-like
refined dehghts. I suspect that the pubhc is not

THE TITANIC INQUIRY 317

so very guilty in this matter. These things were
pushed on to it in the usual course of trade com-
petitiou. If to-morrow you were to take all these
luxuries away, the pubHc would still travel. I
don't despair of mankind. I beheve that if, by
some catastrophic miracle all ships of every kind
were to disappear off the face of the waters,
together with the means of replacing them, there
would be found, before the end of the week, men
(millionaires, perhaps) cheerfully putting out to
sea in bath-tubs for a fresh start. We are all like
that. This sort of spirit lives in mankind still
uncorrupted by the so-called refinements, the
ingenuity of tradesmen, who look always for
something new to sell, offers to the pubHc.

Let her stay, — I mean the big ship — since she
has come to stay. I only object to the attitude of
the people, who, having called her into being and
having romanced (to speak poHtely) about her,
assume a detached sort of superiority, goodness
only knows why, and raise difficulties in the way
of every suggestion — difficulties about boats, about
bulkheads, about discipHne, about davits, all sorts
of difficulties. To most of them the only answer
would be : " Where there's a will there's a way "
— the most wise of proverbs. But some of these
objections are really too stupid for anything. I
shall try to give an instance of what I mean.

This Inquiry is admirably conducted. I am not

L

'^4^

318 THE TITANIC INQUIRY

alluding to the lawyers representing " various
interests," who are trying to earn their fees by
casting all sorts of mean aspersions on the char-
acters of all sorts of people not a bit worse than
themselves. It is honest to give value for your
wages ; and the '^ bravos " of ancient Venice who
kept their stilettos in good order and never failed
to dehver the stab bargained for with their
employers, considered themselves an honest body
of professional men, no doubt. But they don't
compel my admiration, whereas the conduct of
this Inquiry does. And as it is pretty certain to
be attacked, I take this opportunity to deposit
here my nickel of appreciation. Well, lately,
there came before it witnesses responsible for the
designing of the ship. One of them was asked
whether it would not be advisable to make each
coal-bunker of the ship a water-tight compartment
by means of a suitable door.

The answer to such a question should have
been, " Certainly," for it is obvious to the
simplest intelligence that the more water-tight
spaces you provide in a ship (consistently with
having her workable) the nearer you approach
safety. But instead of admitting the expediency
of the suggestion, this witness at once raised an
objection as to the possibiHty of closing tightly
the door of a bunker on account of the slope of
coal. This with the true expert's attitude of ^* My

THE 1I7ANIC INQUIRY 319

dear man, you don't know what you are talking
about."

Now would you believe that the objection put
forward was absolutely futile ? I don't know
whether the distinguished President of the Court
perceived this. Very likely he did, though I don't
suppose he was ever on terms of familiarity with
a ship's bunker. But I have. I have been inside;
and you may take it that what I say of them is
correct. I don't wish to be wearisome to the
benevolent reader, but I want to put his finger,
so to speak, on the inanity of the objection raised
by the expert. A bunker is an enclosed space for
holding coals, generally located against the ship's
side, and having an opening, a doorway in fact,
into the stokehold. Men called trimmers go in
there, and by means of implements called slices
make the coal run through that opening on to the
floor of the stokehold, where it is within reach of
the stokers' (firemen's) shovels. This being so,
you will easily understand that there is constantly
a more or less thick layer of coal generally shaped
in a slope lying in that doorway. And the objec-
tion of the expert was : that because of this
obstruction it would be impossible to close the
water-tight door, and therefore that the thing
could not be done. And that objection was inane.
A water-tight door in a bulkhead may be defined
as a metal plate which is made to close a given

320 THE TITANIC INQUIRY

opening by some mechanical means. And if
there were a law of Medes and Persians that a
water-tight door should always slide downwards
and never otherwise, the objection would be to a
great extent vahd. But what is there to prevent
those doors to be fitted so as to move upwards, or
horizontally, or slantwise ? In which case they
would go through the obstructing layer of coal as
easily as a knife goes through butter. Anyone
may convince himself of it by experimenting with
a light piece of board and a heap of stones anywhere
along our roads. Probably the joint of such a door
would weep a little — and there is no necessity for
its being hermetically tight — but the object of
converting bunkers into spaces of safety would be
attained. You may take my word for it that this
could be done without any great effort of ingenuity.
And that is why I have quahiied the expert's
objection as inane.

Of course, these doors must not be operated
from the bridge because of the risk of trapping the
coal-trimmers inside the bunker; but on the signal
of all other water-tight doors in the ship being
closed (as would be done in case of a coUision) they
too could be closed on the order of the engineer
of the watch, who would see to the safety of the
trimmers. If the rent in the ship's side were within
the bunker itself, that would become manifest
enough without any signal, and the rush of water

THE TITANIC INQUIRY 321

into the stokehold could be cut off directly the
doorplate came into its place. Say a minute at
the very outside. Naturally, if the blow of a
right-angled collision, for instance, were heavy
enough to smash through the inner bulkhead of
the bunker, why, there would be then nothing to
do but for the stokers and trimmers and everybody
in there to clear out of the stoke-room. But that
does not mean that the precaution of having water-
tight doors to the bunkers is useless, superfluous,
or impossible.^

And talking of stokeholds, firemen, and trim-
mers, men whose heavy labour has not a single
redeeming feature; which is unhealthy, unin-
spiring, arduous, without the reward of personal
pride in it; sheer, hard, brutahsing toil, belonging
neither to earth nor sea, I greet with joy the
advent for marine purposes of the internal com-
bustion engine. The disappearance of the marine
boiler will be a real progress, which anybody in
sympathy with his kind must welcome. Instead
of the unthrifty, unruly, nondescript crowd the
boilers require, a crowd of men in the ship but
not oj her, we shall have comparatively small
crews of discipHned, intelligent workers, able to
steer the ship, handle anchors, man boats, and at
the same time competent to take their place at a

^ Since writing the above, I am told that such doors are
fitted in the bunkers of more than one ship in the Atlantic
trade.

X

322 THE TITANIC INQUIRY

bench as fitters and repairers ; the resourceful and
skilled seamen-mechanics of the future, the legiti-
mate successors of these seamen-sailors of the past,
who had their own kind of skill, hardihood, and
tradition, and whose last days it has been my lot
to share.

One Hves and learns and hears very surprising
things — things that one hardly knows how to
take, whether seriously or jocularly, how to meet
— with indignation or with contempt ? Things said
by solemn experts, by exalted directors, by glori-
fied ticket-sellers, by officials of all sorts. I sup-
pose that one of the uses of such an inquiry is
to give such people enough rope to hang them-
selves with. And I hope that some of them won't
neglect to do so. One of them declared two days
ago that there was " nothing to learn from the
catastrophe of the TitanicJ^ That he had been
" giving his best consideration " to certain rules
for ten years, and had come to the conclusion
that nothing ever happened at sea, and that rules
and regulations, boats and sailors, were unneces-
sary; that what was really wrong with the Titanic
was that she carried too many boats.

No; I am not joking. If you don't believe me,
pray look back through the reports and you will
find it all there. I don't recollect the official's
name, but it ought to have been Pooh-Bah. Well,
Pooh-Bah said all these things, and when asked

THE TITANIC INQUIRY 323

whether he really meant it, intimated his readiness
to give the subject more of *' his best considera-
tion " — for another ten years or so apparently —
but he beheved, oh yes! he was certain, that had
there been fewer boats there would have been
more people saved. Really, when reading the
report of this admirably conducted inquiry one
isn't certain at times whether it is an Admirable
Inquiry or a felicitous opera-bouffe of the Gilbertian
type — with a rather grim subject, to be sure.

Yes, rather grim — but the comic treatment never
fails. My readers will remember that in the number
of The English Review for May, 191 2, I quoted the
old case of the Jrizona, and went on from that to
prophesy the coming of a new seamanship (in a
spirit of irony far removed from fun) at the call of
the sublime builders of unsinkable ships. I thought
that, as a small boy of my acquaintance says, I
was " doing a sarcasm," and regarded it as a rather
wild sort of sarcasm at that. Well, I am blessed
(excuse the vulgarism) if a witness has not turned
up who seems to have been inspired by the same
thought, and evidently longs in his heart for the
advent of the new seamanship. He is an expert,
of course, and I rather beheve he's the same
gentleman who did not see his way to fit water-
tight doors to bunkers. With ludicrous earnest-
ness he assured the Commission of his intense
belief that had only the Titanic struck end-on

324 THE TITANIC INQUIRY

she would have come into port all right. And in
the whole tone of his insistent statement there
was suggested the regret that the officer in charge
(who is dead now, and mercifully outside the comic
scope of this inquiry) was so ill-advised as to try
to pass clear of the ice. Thus my sarcastic prophecy,
that such a suggestion was sure to turn up^ receh^es
an unexpected fulfilment. You will see yet that
in deference to the demands of '' progress " the
theory of the new seamanship will become estab-
hshed: *' Whatever you see in front of you — ram
it fair. . . ." The new seamanship! Looks simple,
doesn't it ? But it will be a very exact art indeed.
The proper handling of an unsinkable ship, you
see, will demand that she should be made to hit
the iceberg very accurately with her nose, because
should you perchance scrape the bluff of the bow
instead, she may, without ceasing to be as unsink-
able as before, find her way to the bottom. I
congratulate the future Transatlantic passengers
on the new and vigorous sensations in store for
them. They shall go bounding across from iceberg
to iceberg at twenty-five knots with precision and
safety, and a '' cheerful bumpy sound " — as the
immortal poem has it. It will be a teeth-loosening,
exhilarating experience. The decorations will be
Louis-Quinze, of course, and the cafe shall remain
open all night. But what about the priceless Sevres
porcelain and the Venetian glass provided for the

THE TMANIC INQUIRY 325

service of Transatlantic passengers ? Well, I am
afraid all that will have to be replaced by silver
goblets and plates. Nasty, common, cheap silver.
But those who will go to sea must be prepared to
put up with a certain amount of hardship.

And there shall be no boats. Why should there
be no boats ? Because Pooh-Bah has said that the
fewer the boats, the more people can be saved;
and therefore with no boats at all, no one need be
lost. But even if there was a flaw in this argument,
pray look at the other advantages the absence of
boats gives you. There can't be the annoyance of
having to go into them in the middle of the night,
and the unpleasantness, after saving your life by
the skin of your teeth, of being hauled over the
coals by irreproachable members of the Bar with
hints that you are no better than a cowardly
scoundrel and your wife a heartless monster.
Less Boats. No boats! Great should be the
gratitude of passage-selling Combines to Pooh-
Bah; and they ought to cherish his memory when
he dies. But no fear of that. His kind never dies."^.
All you have to do, 0 Combine, is to knock at j
the door of the Marine Department, look in, and
beckon to the first man you see. That will be he,
very much at your service — prepared to affirm after
" ten years of my best consideration " and a bundle \
of statistics in hand, that : '^ There's no lesson to \
be learned, and that there is nothing to be done! "/

326 THE TITANIC INQUIRY

On an earlier day there was another witness
before the Court of Inquiry. A mighty official of
the White Star Line. The impression of his
testimony which the Report gave is of an almost
scornful impatience with all this fuss and pother.
Boats! Of course we have crowded our decks
with them in answer to this ignorant clamour.
Mere lumber! How can we handle so many boats
with our davits ? Your people don't know the
conditions of the problem. We have given these
matters our best consideration, and we have done
what we thought reasonable. We have done more
than our duty. We are wise, and good, and im-
peccable. And whoever says otherwise is either
ignorant or wicked.

This is the gist of these scornful answers which
disclose the psychology of commercial under-
takings. It is the same psychology which fifty
or so years ago, before Samuel PlimsoU uplifted
his voice, sent overloaded ships to sea. " Why
shouldn't we cram in as much cargo as our ships
will hold ? Look how few, how very few of them
get lost, after all."

Men don't change. Not very much. And the
only answer to be given to this manager who came
out, impatient and indignant, from behind the
plate-glass windows of his shop to be discovered
by this inquiry, and to tell us that he, they, the
whole three million (or thirty million, for all I

THE TITANIC INQUIRY 327

know) capital Organisation for selling passages,
has considered the problem of boats — the only
answer to give him is: that this is not a problem
of boats at all. It is the problem of decent
behaviour. If you can't carry or handle so many
boats, then don't cram quite so many people on
board. It is as simple as that — this problem of
right feehng and right conduct, the real nature of
which seems beyond the comprehension of ticket-r
providers. Don't sell so many tickets, my virtuous
dignitary. After all, men and women (unless con-j
sidered from a purely commercial point of view)|
are not exactly the cattle of the Western-oceanI
trade, that used some twenty years ago to bei
thrown overboard on an emergency and left to
swim round and round before they sank. If you]
can't get more boats, then sell less tickets. Don't
drown so many people on the finest, calmest night
that was ever known in the North Atlantic— r
even if you have provided them with a little music
to get drowned by. Sell less tickets! That's the
solution of the problem, your Mercantile Highness^
But there would be a cry, " Oh! This requires
consideration! " (Ten years of it — eh?) Well, no!
This does not require consideration. This is the
very first thing to do. At once. Limit the number
of people by the boats you can handle. That's
honesty. And thenyoujnay_go_on fumbling for
years about these precious davits which are such

328 THE TITANIC INQUIRY

a stumbling-block to _your humanity. These fas-
cinating patent davits. These davits that refuse
to do three times as much work as they were
meant to do. Oh! The wickedness of these davits!
One of the great discoveries of this admirable
Inquiry is the fascination of the davits. All these
people positively can't get away from them. They
shuffle about and groan around their davits.
Whereas the obvious thing to do is to eliminate
the man-handled davits altogether. Don't you
think that with all the mechanical contrivances,
with all the generated power on board these ships,
it is about time to get rid of the hundred-years-
old, man-power appliances ? Cranes are what is
wanted; low, compact cranes with adjustable
heads, one to each set of six or nine boats. And
if people tell you of insuperable difficulties, if they
tell you of the swing and spin of spanned boats,
don't you believe them. The heads of the cranes
need not be any higher than the heads of the
davits. The lift required would be only a couple
of inches. As to the spin, there is a way to prevent
that if you have in each boat two men who know
what they are about. I have taken up on board a
heavy ship's boat, in the open sea (the ship rolling
heavily), with a common cargo derrick. And a
cargo derrick is very much like a crane; but a
crane devised ad hoc would be infinitely easier to
work. We must remember that the loss of this

THE TITANIC INQUIRY 329

ship has altered the moral atmosphere. As long (jj
as the Titanic is remembered, an ugly rush for
the boats may be feared in case of some accident.
You can't hope to drill into perfect discipline a
casual mob of six hundred firemen and waiters,
but in a ship like the Titanic you can keep on
a permanent trustworthy crew of one hundred
intelligent seamen and mechanics who would know
their stations for abandoning ship and would do
the work efficiently. The boats could be lowered
with sufficient dispatch. One does not want to let
rip one's boats by the run all at the same time.
With six boat-cranes, six boats would be simul-
taneously swung, filled, and got away from the
side; and if any sort of order is kept, the ship
could be cleared of the passengers in a quite short
time. For there must be boats enough for the
passengers and crew, whether you increase the
number of boats or limit the number of passengers,
irrespective of the size of the ship. That is the~
only hones^ course. Any other would be rather
worse than putting sand in the sugar, for which
a tradesman gets fined or imprisoned. Do not let
us take a romantic view of the so-called progress.
A company selling passages is a tradesman;/
though from the way these people talk and be-
have you would think they are benefactors of\
mankind in some mysterious way, engaged in I
some lofty and amazing enterprise. ^^.^

330 THE TITANIC INQUIRY

All these boats should have a motor-engine in
them. And, of course, the glorified tradesman,
the mummified official, the technicians, and all
these secretly disconcerted hangers-on to the
enormous ticket-selling enterprise, will raise objec-
tions to it with every air of superiority. But don't
beheve them. Doesn't it strike you as absurd
that in this age of mechanical propulsion, of
generated power, the boats of such ultra-modern
ships are fitted with oars and sails, implements
more than three thousand years old ? Old as the
siege of Troy. Older! . . . And I know what I
am talking about. Only six weeks ago I was on
the river in an ancient, rough, ship's boat, fitted
with a two-cylinder motor-engine of y\ h.p. Just
a common ship's boat, which the man who owns
her uses for taking the workmen and stevedores
to and from the ships loading at the buoys off
Greenhithe. She would have carried some thirty
people. No doubt has carried as many daily for
many months. And she can tow a twenty-five
ton water barge — which is also part of that man's
business.

It was a boisterous day, half a gale of wind
against the flood tide. Two fellows managed her.
A youngster of seventeen was cox (and a first-rate
cox he was too) ; a fellow in a torn blue jersey, not
much older, of the usual riverside type, looked
after the engine. I spent an hour and a half in

THE TITANIC INQUIRY 331

her, running up and down and across that reach.
She handled perfectly. With eight or twelve oars
out she could not have done anything hke as well.
These two youngsters at my request kept her
stationary for ten minutes, with a touch of engine
and helm now and then, within three feet of a big,
ugly mooring buoy over which the water broke
and the spray flew in sheets, and which would
have holed her if she had bumped against it. But
she kept her position, it seemed to me, to an inch,
without apparently any trouble to these boys.
You could not have done it with oars. And her
engine did not take up the space of three men, even
on the assumption that you would pack people as
tight as sardines in a box.

Not the room of three people, I tell you! But
no one would want to pack a boat like a sardine-
box. There must be room enough to handle
the oars. But in that old ship's boat, even if
she had been desperately overcrowded, there was
power (manageable by two riverside youngsters)
to get away quickly from a ship's side (very
important for your safety and to make room for
other boats), the power to keep her easily head
to sea, the power to move at five to seven knots
towards a rescuing ship, the power to come safely
alongside. And all that in an engine which did not
take up the room of three people.

A poor boatman who had to scrape together pain-

332 THE IITANIC INQUIRY

fully the few sovereigns of the price had the idea of
putting that engine into his boat. But all these
designers, directors, managers, constructors, and
others whom we may include in the generic name
of Yamsi, never thought of it for the boats of the
biggest tank on earth, or rather on sea. And there-
fore they assume an air of impatient superiority
and make objections — however sick at heart they
may be. And I hope they are; at least, as much
as a grocer who has sold a tin of imperfect salmon
which destroyed only half a dozen people. And
you know, the tinning of salmon was " progress "
as much at least as the building of the Titanic.
More, in fact. I am not attacking shipowners. I
care neither more nor less for Lines, Companies,
Combines, and generally for Trade arrayed in
purple and fine linen than the Trade cares for me.
/f) But I am attacking foolish arrogance, which is
"^ fair game; the offensive posture of superiority by
which they hide the sense of their guilt, while the
echoes of the miserably hypocritical cries along
the alley-ways of that ship: " An)- more women?
Any more women ? " linger yet in our ears.

I have been expecting from one or the other of
them all bearing the generic name of Yamsi, some-
thing, a sign of some sort, some sincere utterance,
in the course of this Admirable Inquiry, of manly,
of genuine compunction. In vain. All trade talk.
Not a whisper — except for the conventional ex-

\

THE TIIANIC INQUIRY 333

pression of regret at the beginning of the yearly]
report — which otherwise is a cheerful documenty
Dividends, you know. The shop is doing well. '

And the Admirable Inquiry goes on, punctuated
by idiotic laughter, by paid-for cries of indignation
from under legal wigs, bringing to light the psycho-
logy of various commercial characters too stupid
to know that they are giving themselves away
— an admirably laborious inquiry into facts that
speak, nay shout, for themselves.

I am not a soft-headed, humanitarian faddist.
I have been ordered in my time to do dangerous
work; I have ordered others to do dangerous
work; I have never ordered a man to do any work
I was not prepared to do myself. I attach no
exaggerated value to human life. But I know it
has a value for which the most generous contribu-
tions to the Mansion House and " Heroes " funds
cannot pay. And they cannot pay for it, because
people, even of the third class (excuse my plain
speaking), are not cattle. Death has its sting.
If Yamsi's manager's head were forcibly held under
the water of his bath for some little time, he would
soon discover that it has. Some people can only
learn from that sort of experience which comes
home to their own dear selves.

I am not a sentimentalist; therefore it is
not a great consolation to me to see all these
people breveted as '' Heroes " by the penny and

y

€

334 THE TITANIC INQUIRY

halfpenny Press. It is no consolation at all. In
extremity, in the worst extremity, the majority
of people, even of common people, will behave
decently. It's a fact of which only the journalists
don't seem aware. Hence their enthusiasm, I
suppose. But I, who am not a sentimentaHst,
think it would have been finer if the band of the
Titanic had been quietly saved, instead of being
drowned while playing — whatever tune they were
playing, the poor devils. I would rather they had
been saved to support their families than to
see their families supported by the magnificent
generosity of the subscribers. I am not consoled
by the false, written-up, Drury Lane aspects of
that event, which is neither drama, nor melodrama,
nor tragedy, but the exposure of arrogant folly.
There is nothing more heroic in being drowned
very much against your will, off a holed, helpless,
big tank in which you bought your passage, than
in dying of colic caused by the imperfect salmon
in the tin you bought from your grocer.

And that's the truth. The unsentimental truth
stripped of the romantic garment the Press has
wrapped around this most unnecessary disaster.

PROTECTION OF OCEAN

LINERS^

1914

The loss of the Empress of Ireland awakens feelings
somewhat different from those the sinking of the
titanic had called up on two continents. The grief
for the lost and the sympathy for the survivors
and the bereaved are the same; but there is not,
and there cannot be, the same undercurrent of
indignation. The good ship that is gone (I remem-
ber reading of her launch something like eight
years ago) had not been ushered in with beat of
drum as the chief wonder of the world of waters.
The company who owned her had no agents,
authorised or unauthorised, giving boastful in-
terviews about her unsinkabihty to newspaper
reporters ready to swallow any sort of trade
statement if only sensational enough for their
readers — readers as ignorant as themselves of the
nature of all things outside the commonest expe-
rience of the man in the street.

No; there was nothing of that in her case. The
company was content to have as fine, staunch,
seaworthy a ship as the technical knowledge of

1 The loss of the Empress of Ireland.
335

336 PROTECTION OF OCEAN LINERS

that time could make her. In fact, she was as safe
a ship as nine hundred and ninety-nine ships out
of any thousand now afloat upon the sea. No;
whatever sorrow one can feel, one does not feel
indignation. This was not an accident of a very
boastful marine transportation; this was a real
casualty of the sea. The indignation of the New
South Wales Premier flashed telegraphically to
Canada is perfectly uncalled-for. That statesman,
whose sympathy for poor mates and seamen is so
suspect to me that I wouldn't take it at fifty
per cent, discount, does not seem to know that
a British Court of Marine Inquiry, ordinary or
extraordinary, is not a contrivance for catching
scapegoats. I, who have been seaman, mate and
master for twenty years, holding my certificate
under the Board of Trade, may safely say that
none of us ever felt in danger of unfair treatment
from a Court of Inquiry. It is a perfectly impartial
tribunal which has never punished seamen for the
faults of shipowners — as, indeed, it could not do
even if it wanted to. And there is another thing
the angry Premier of New South Wales does not
know. It is this : that for a ship to float for fifteen
minutes after receiving such a blow by a bare
stem on her bare side is not so bad.

She took a tremendous list which made the
minutes of grace vouchsafed her of not much use
for the saving of lives. But for that neither her

PROTECTION OF OCEAN LINERS 337

owners nor her officers are responsible. It would
have been wonderful if she had not listed with such
a hole in her side. Even the Aquitania with such
an opening in her outer hull would be bound to
take a list. I don't say this with the intention of
disparaging this latest '* triumph of marine archi-
tecture " — to use the consecrated phrase. The
Aquitania is a magnificent ship. I beheve she
would bear her people unscathed through ninety-
nine per cent, of all possible accidents of the sea.
But suppose a collision out on the ocean involving
damage as extensive as this one was, and suppose
then a gale of wind coming on. Even the Aquitania
would not be quite seaworthy, for she would not
be manageable.

We have been accustoming ourselves to put our
trust in material, technical skill, invention, and
scientific contrivances to such an extent that we
have come at last to believe that with these things
we can overcome the immortal gods themselves.
Hence when a disaster hke this happens, there
arises, besides the shock to our humane sentiments,
a feeling of irritation, such as the hon. gentleman
at the head of the New South Wales Government
has discharged in a telegraphic flash upon the
world.

But it is no use being angry and trying to hang
a threat of penal servitude over the heads of the
directors of shipping companies. You can't get

338 PROTECTION OF OCEAN LINERS

the better of the immortal gods by the mere power
of material contrivances. There will be neither
scapegoats in this matter nor yet penal servitude
for anyone. The Directors of the Canadian Pacific
Railway Company did not sell " safety at sea " to
the people on board the Empress of Ireland, They
never in the slightest degree pretended to do so.
WTiat they did was to sell them a sea-passage,
giving very good value for the money. Nothing
more. As long as men will travel on the water,
the sea-gods will take their toll. They will catch
good seamen napping, or confuse their judgment
by arts well known to those who go to sea, or over-
come them by the sheer brutality of elemental
forces. It seems to me that the resentful sea-gods
never do sleep, and are never weary; wherein
the seamen who are mere mortals condemned to
unending vigilance are no match for them.

And yet it is right that the responsibility should
be fixed. It is the fate of men that even in their
contests with the immortal gods they must render
an account of their conduct. Life at sea is the Hfe
in which, simple as it is, you can't afford to make
mistakes.

With whom the mistake lies here, is not for me
to say. I see that Sir Thomas Shaughnessy has
expressed his opinion of Captain Kendall's absolute
innocence. This statement, premature as it is, does
him honour, for I don't suppose for a moment that

PROTECTION OF OCEAN LINERS 339

the thought of the material issue involved in the
verdict of the Court of Inquiry influenced him in
the least. I don't suppose that he is more impressed
by the writ of two million dollars nailed (or more
likely pasted) to the foremast of the Norwegian
than I am, who don't beHeve that the Storstad is
worth two million shillings. This is merely a move
of commercial law, and even the whole majesty
of the British Empire (so finely invoked by the
Sheriff) cannot squeeze more than a very moderate
quantity of blood out of a stone. Sir Thomas, in
his confident pronouncement, stands loyally by
a loyal and distinguished servant of his company.

This thing has to be investigated yet, and it is
not proper for me to express my opinion, though
I have one, in this place and at this time. But I
need not conceal my sympathy with the vehement
protestations of Captain Andersen. A charge of
neglect and indifference in the matter of saving
lives is the cruellest blow that can be aimed at
the character of a seaman worthy of the name.
On the face of the facts as known up to now the
charge does not seem to be true. If upwards of
three hundred people have been, as stated in the
last reports, saved by the Storstad, then that ship
must have been at hand and rendering all the
assistance in her power.

As to the point which must come up for the
decision of the Court of Inquiry, it is as fine as a

Y2

340 PROTECTION OF OCEAN LINERS

hair. The two ships saw each other plainly enough
before the fog closed on them. No one can question
Captain Kendall's prudence. He has been as pru-
dent as ever he could be. There is not a shadow
of doubt as to that.

But there is this question: Accepting the
position of the two ships when they saw each
other as correctly described in the very latest
newspaper reports, it seems clear that it was the
Empress of Ireland's duty to keep clear of the
collier, and what the Court will have to decide is
whether the stopping of the liner was, under the
circumstances, the best way of keeping her clear
of the other ship, which had the right to proceed
cautiously on an unchanged course.

This, reduced to its simplest expression, is the
question which the Court will have to decide.

And now, apart from all problems of manoeu-
vring, of rules of the road, of the judgment of the
men in command, away from their possible errors
and from the points the Court will have to decide,
if we ask ourselves what it was that was needed
to avert this disaster costing so many lives,
spreading so much sorrow, and to a certain point
shocking the public conscience — if we ask that
question, what is the answer to be ?
\ I hardly dare set it down. Yes; what was it
that was needed, what ingenious combinations of
shipbuilding, what transverse bulkheads, what skill,

PROTECTION OF OCEAN LINERS 341

what genius — how much expense in money and
trained thinking, what learned contriving, to avert
that disaster ?

To save that ship, all these lives, so much
anguish for the dying, and so much grief for the
bereaved, all that was needed in this particular
case in the way of science, money, ingenuity, and
seamanship was a man, and a cork-fender.

Yes; a man, a quartermaster, an able seaman
that would know how to jump to an order and was
not an excitable fool. In my time at sea there was
no lack of men in British ships who could jump to
an order and were not excitable fools. As to the
so-called cork-fender, it is a sort of soft balloon
made from a net of thick rope rather more than a
foot in diameter. It is such a long time since I
have indented for cork-fenders that I don't remem-
ber how much these things cost apiece. One of
them, hung judiciously over the side at the end
of its lanyard by a man who knew what he was
about, might perhaps have saved from destruction
the ship and upwards of a thousand lives.

Two men with a heavy rope-fender would have
been better, but even the other one might have
made all the difference between a very damaging
accident and downright disaster. By the time the
cork-fender had been squeezed between the liner's
side and the bluff of the Storstad^s bow, the effect
of the latter's reversed propeller would have been

342 PROTECTION OF OCEAN LINERS

produced, and the ships would have come apart
with no more damage than bulged and started plates.
Wasn't there lying about on that liner's bridge,
fitted with all sorts of scientific contrivances, a
couple of simple and efl[ective cork-fenders — or on
board of that Norwegian either ? There must have
been, since one ship was just out of a dock or
harbour and the other just arriving. That is the
time, if ever, when cork-fenders are lying about a
ship's decks. And there was plenty of time to use
them, and exactly in the conditions in which such
fenders are effectively used. The water was as
smooth as in any dock; one ship was motionless,
the other just moving at what may be called
dock-speed when entering, leaving, or shifting
berths; and from the moment the collision was
seen to be unavoidable till the actual contact a
whole minute elapsed. A minute, — an age under
the circumstances. And no one thought of the
homely expedient of dropping a simple, unpre-
tending rope-fender between the destructive stem
and the defenceless side!

I appeal confidently to all the seamen in the still
United Kingdom, from his Majesty the King (who
has been really at sea) to the youngest intelHgent
A.B. in any ship that will dock next tide in the
ports of this realm, whether there was not a chance
there. I have followed the sea for more than
twenty years; I have seen collisions; I have been

PROTECTION OF OCEAN LINERS 343

involved in a collision myself; and I do believe
that in the case under consideration this little
thing would have made all that enormous differ-
ence— the difference between considerable damage
and an appalling disaster.

Many letters have been written to the Press on
the subject of collisions. I have seen some. They
contain many suggestions, valuable and otherwise;
but there is only one which hits the nail on the
head. It is a letter to the Times from a retired
Captain of the Royal Navy. It is printed in small
type, but it deserved to be printed in letters of
gold and crimson. The writer suggests that all
steamers should be obliged by law to carry hung
over their stem what we at sea call a " pudding."

This solution of the problem is as wonderful in
its simplicity as the celebrated trick of Columbus's
egg, and infinitely more useful to mankind. A
" pudding " is a thing something Hke a bolster
of stout rope-net stuffed with old junk, but
thicker in the middle than at the ends. It can be
seen on almost every tug working in our docks.
It is, in fact, a fixed rope-fender always in a position
where presumably it would do most good. Had the
Storstad carried such a " pudding " proportionate
to her size (say, two feet diameter in the thickest
part) across her stem, and hung above the level of
her hawse-pipes, there would have been an accident
certainly, and some repair-work for the nearest

344 PROTECTION OF OCEAN LINERS

ship-yard, but there would have been no loss of
life to deplore.

It seems almost too simple to be true, but I
assure you that the statement is as true as any-
thing can be. We shall see whether the lesson will
be taken to heart. We shall see. There is a Com-
mission of learned men sitting to consider the
subject of saving life at sea. They are discussing
bulkheads, boats, davits, manning, navigation,
but I am willing to bet that not one of them has
thought of the humble " pudding." They can
make what rules they like. We shall see if, with
that disaster calling aloud to them, they will make
the rule that every steam-ship should carry a
permanent fender across her stem, from two to
four feet in diameter in its thickest part in propor-
tion to the size of the ship. But perhaps they may
think the thing too rough and unsightly for this
scientific and aesthetic age. It certainly won't look
very pretty but I make bold to say it will save more
lives at sea than any amount of the Marconi instal-
lations which are being forced on the shipowners
on that very ground — the safety of lives at sea.

Wc shall see !

To the Editor of the Daily Express,
Sir,

As I fully expected, this morning's post brought
me not a few letters on the subject of that article

PROTECTION OF OCEAN LINERS 345

of mine in the Illustrated London News, And they
are very much what I expected them to be.

I shall address my reply to Captain Littlehales,
since obviously he can speak with authority, and
speaks in his own name, not under a pseudonym.
And also for the reason that it is no use talking
to men who tell you to shut your head for a con-
founded fool. They are not likely to hsten to
you.

But if there be in Liverpool anybody not too
angry to listen, I want to assure him or them that
my exclamatory line, " Was there no one on board
either of these ships to think of dropping a fender
— etc.," was not uttered in the spirit of blame for
anyone. I would not dream of blaming a seaman
for doing or omitting to do anything a person
sitting in a perfectly safe and unsinkable study
may think of. All my sympathy goes to the two
captains; much the greater share of it to Captain
Kendall, who has lost his ship and whose load of
responsibility was so much heavier! I may not
know a great deal, but I know how anxious and
perplexing are those nearly end-on approaches,
so infinitely more trying to the men in charge than
a frank right-angle crossing.

I may begin by reminding Captain Littlehales
that I, as well as himself, have had to form my
opinion, or rather my vision, of the accident, from
printed statements, of which many must have

346 PROTECTION OF OCEAN LINERS

been loose and inexact and none could have been
minutely circumstantial. I have read the reports
of the Times and the Daily Telegraphy and no
others. What stands in the columns of these papers
is responsible for my conclusion — or perhaps for
the state of my feehngs when I wrote the Illustrated
London News article.

From these sober and unsensational reports, I
derived the impression that this collision was a
collision of the slowest sort. I take it, of course,
that both the men in charge speak the strictest
truth as to preliminary facts. We know that the
Empress oj Ireland was for a time lying motionless.
And if the captain of the Storstad stopped his
engines directly the fog came on (as he says he
did), then taking into account the adverse current
of the river, the Storstad, by the time the two
ships sighted each other again, must have been
barely moving over the ground. The " over the
ground " speed is the only one that matters in
this discussion. In fact, I represented her to
myself as just creeping on ahead — no more. This,
I contend, is an imaginative view (and we can
form no other) not utterly absurd for a seaman to
adopt.

So much for the imaginative view of the sad
occurrence which caused me to speak of the fender,
and be chided for it in unmeasured terms. Not by
Captain Littlehales, however, and I wish to reply

PROTECTION OF OCEAN LINERS 347

to what he says with all possible deference. His
illustration borrowed from boxing is very apt, and
in a certain sense makes for my contention. Yes.
A blow delivered with a boxing-glove will draw
blood or knock a man out; but it would not
crush in his nose flat or break his jaw for him — at
least, not always. And this is exactly my point.

Twice in my sea life I have had occasion to be
impressed by the preserving effect of a fender.
Once I was myself the man who dropped it over.
Not because I was so very clever or smart, but
simply because I happened to be at hand. And
I agree with Captain Littlehales that to see a
steamer's stem coming at you at the rate of only
two knots is a staggering experience. The thing
seems to have power enough behind it to cut half
through the terrestrial globe.

And perhaps Captain Littlehales is right? It
may be that I am mistaken in my appreciation of
circumstances and possibilities in this case — or in
any such case. Perhaps what was really wanted
there was an extraordinary man and an extra-
ordinary fender. I care nothing if possibly my
deep feehng has betrayed me into something which
some people call absurdity.

Absurd was the word applied to the proposal
for carrying " enough boats for all " on board the
big liners. And my absurdity can affect no Hves,
break no bones — need make no one angry. Why

348 PROTECTION OF OCEAN LINERS

should I care, then, as long as out of the discussion
of my absurdity there will emerge the acceptance
of the suggestion of Captain F. Papillon, R.N.,
for the universal and compulsory fitting of very
heavy collision fenders on the stems of all
mechanically propelled ships ?

An extraordinary man we cannot always get
from heaven on order, but an extraordinary fender
that will do its work is well within the power of
a committee of old boatswains to plan out, make,
and place in position. I beg to ask, not in a
provocative spirit, but simply as to a matter of
fact which he is better quahfied to judge than I
am — Will Captain Littlehales affirm that if the
Storstad had carried, slung securely across the stem,
even nothing thicker than a single bale of wool
(an ordinary, hand-pressed, Australian wool-bale),
it would have made no difference ?

If scientific men can invent an air cushion, a
gas cushion, or even an electricity cushion (with
wires or without), to fit neatly round the stems
and bows of ships, then let them go to work in
God's name and produce another " marvel of
science " without loss of time. For something
like this has long been due — too long for the
credit of that part of mankind which is not absurd,
and in which I include, among others, such people
as marine underwriters, for instance.

Meanwhile, turning to materials I am familiar

PROTECTION OF OCEAN LINERS 349

with, I would put my trust in canvas, lots of big
rope, and in large, very large quantities of old
junk.

It sounds awfully primitive, but if it will
mitigate the mischief in only fifty per cent, of
cases, is it not well worth trying r Most collisions
occur at slow speeds, and it ought to be remem-
bered that in case of a big Hner's loss, involving
many lives, she is generally sunk by a ship much
smaller than herself.

Joseph Conrad.

A FRIENDLY PLACE

Eighteen years have passed since I last set foot in
the London Sailors' Home. I was not staying there
then; I had gone in to try to find a man I wanted
to see. He was one of those able seamen who, in
a watch, are a perfect blessing to a young officer.
I could perhaps remember here and there among
the shadows of my sea-life a more daring man, or
a more agile man, or a man more expert in some
special branch of his calling — such as wire spHcing,
for instance; but for all-round competence, he was
unequalled. As character he was sterling stuff.
His name was Anderson. He had a fine, quiet
face, kindly eyes, and a voice which matched that
something attractive in the whole man. Though
he looked yet in the prime of life, shoulders,
chest, limbs untouched by decay, and though
his hair and moustache were only iron-grey, he
was on board ship generally called Old Andy
by his fellows. He accepted the name with some
complacency.

I made my enquiry at the highly-glazed entry
office. The clerk on duty opened an enormous
ledger, and after running his finger down a page,
informed me that Anderson had gone to sea a

351

352 A FRIENDLY PLACE

week before, in a ship bound round the Horn.
Then, sniiHng at me, he added: " Old /\ndy. We
know him well, here. What a nice fellow! "

I, who knew what a " good man," in a sailor
sense, he was, assented without reserve. Heaven
only knows when, if ever, he came back from that
voyage, to the Sailors' Home of which he was a
faithful cHent.

I went out glad to know he was safely at sea,
but sorry not to have seen him; though, indeed,
if I had, we would not have exchanged more than
a score of words, perhaps. He was not a talkative
man, Old Andy, whose affectionate ship-name
clung to him even in that Sailors' Home, where
the staff understood and Hked the sailors (those
men without a home) and did its duty by them
with an unobtrusive tact, with a patient and
humorous sense of their idiosyncrasies, to which
I hasten to testify now, when the very existence
of that institution is menaced after so many years
of most useful work.

Walking away from it on that day eighteen
years ago, I was far from thinking it was for the
last time. Great changes have come since, over
land and sea; and if I were to seek somebody
who knew Old Andy it would be (of all people
in the world) Mr. John Galsworthy. For Mr. John
Galsworthy, Andy, and myself have been ship-
mates together in our different stations, for some

A FRIENDLY PLACE 353

forty days in the Indian Ocean in the early
nineties. And, but for us two, Old Andy's very
memory would be gone from this changing earth.
Yes, things have changed — the very sky, the
atmosphere, the light of judgment which falls on
the labours of men, either splendid or obscure.
Having been asked to say a word to the pubHc on
behalf of the Sailors' Home, I felt immensely
flattered — and troubled. Flattered to have been
thought of in that connection; troubled to find
myself in touch again with that past so deeply
rooted in my heart. And the illusion of nearness
is so great while I trace these lines that I feel as if
I were speaking in the name of that worthy
Sailor-Shade of Old Andy, whose faithfully hard
life seems to my vision a thing of yesterday.

But though the past keeps firm hold on one,
yet one feels with the same warmth that the men
and the institutions of to-day have their merit
and their claims. Others will know how to set
forth before the public the merit of the Sailors'
Home in the eloquent terms of hard facts and
some few figures. For myself, I can only bring a
personal note, give a gHmpse of the human side
of the good work for sailors ashore, carried on
through so many decades with a perfect under-
standing of the end in view. I have been in touch

354 A FRIENDLY PLACE

with the Sailors' Home for sixteen years of my life,
off and on; I have seen the changes in the staff
and I have observed the subtle alterations in the
physiognomy of that stream of sailors passing
through it, in from the sea and out again to sea,
between the years 1878 and 1894. I have listened
to the talk on the decks of ships in all latitudes,
when its name would turn up frequently, and if
I had to characterise its good work in one sen-
tence, I would say that, for seamen, the Well
Street Home was a friendly place.

It was essentially just that ; quietly, unob-
trusively, with a regard for the independence of
the men who sought its shelter ashore, and with
no ulterior aims behind that effective friend-
Hness. No small merit this. And its claim on
the generosity of the public is derived from a
long record of valuable public service. Since we
are all agreed that the men of the merchant
service are a national asset worthy of care and
sympathy, the pubHc could express this sympathy
no better than by enabling the Sailors' Home,
so useful in the past, to continue its friendly
offices to the seamen of future generations.

r€MfL£ ftutSS A/ i.£TCKWORTM

i^DiNGSECT. APR 2 7 1966

PR
6005
04N6
1921

Conrad, Joseph

Notes on life and letters

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UNM